It is May Day in Belfast. The coolness of the morning is a lingering sign that spring is still hanging around, but as the sunshine hesitantly nudges through, summer feels just a breath or two away. At the St Enda's club in north Belfast they're ready for the change in the seasons.
Out on the full pitch a hurling game is in progress. Today is the day when St Enda's hosts the Sean Fox Memorial Shield, a football competition for clubs within Belfast city; the hurling game is the supporting act. The 30 boys cannot be more than 11 or 12 years old, and the full expanse of the field seems to dwarf them. In the middle, a referee tries to keep some sort of order, but a wonderful, light-hearted atmosphere prevails. The enjoyment of the game is all that matters.
St Enda's should not have many problems in the months and years ahead. But there were many darker days when celebratory events like this seemed a lifetime away.
When the first people moved up here over 40 years ago Glengormley was as far north as you could go in Belfast before you found yourself in the rolling countryside of south Antrim. It was one of the new suburbs, and for those who had lived their lives in the cramped, squeezed-together streets of the west and north of the city it offered the possibility of better housing and some space to bring up a family. Glengormley was one of the few places in Belfast where town met country head on.
At first, common ground was not that easy to find, but within a short time it became clear that the GAA was going to serve as the glue that would bind this new community together. Sean Fox had grown up steeped in Irish culture and, like many others, found himself, almost by accident, living and bringing up a family in Glengormley. His son, Dermot, remembers: "My father was an Irish-language speaker since he was very young. He always worked his whole life to promote the Irish language. He actually came from the Falls Road originally but ended up here because he worked for a fish firm called T Keenan and Son, who opened a shop in Glengormley and he was offered management of it.
"That's how we ended up in Glengormley and from when he arrived here he always tried to carry on what he always believed in - the promotion of the Irish language, of Irish games and of Irish culture. Obviously the club was an opportunity for him to fulfil that ambition."
Without Sean Fox and a few others like him, there would have been no St Enda's GAA club. The first germ of an idea came in the early 1950s, and Sean worked with men like Paddy Lavery and families like the Devlins to see a club formed in 1953, although it was 1956 before any teams were entered in competition.
There is no great wonder that the minds of these new arrivals should eventually turn to the GAA. Without its influence in their lives, they felt that there was something missing. Starting a club was the only way they knew to fill that void.
Right from the start, the new club had to struggle against geographical imperatives. Before the influx of Catholics during the 1950s, this part of north Belfast had been predominantly Protestant. Unionist culture, in the form of band parades and Orange marches, struck the dominant cultural note. "I can assure you that right from the start this club was seen as a serious threat to the status quo in Glengormley and as a result was constantly attacked," says Dermot Fox. "It was always perceived in this area as being a threat. The club was a cultural outlet and a focal point for everything that went on here and all expressions of Irishness. The club had no politics at all and it always strove very, very hard to make sure that politics didn't enter into it and everybody was made equally welcome. Protestants and everybody, they were all welcome in this club."
During the early years there was always tension within the area as the club became increasingly confident and visible within the Catholic community in Glengormley. Numbers were also growing as more and more families made the move out of the city.
Each wave of new people brought with it new tranches of GAA aficionados. Every little helped. But with this expansion came more attention from malevolent outside forces. The onset of the Troubles was the catalyst which transformed the existing mistrust and suspicion into outright antipathy and violence.
The experiences of St Enda's through the early part of the 1970s read more like a military briefing than a sporting history. In February 1972 a blast incendiary bomb was thrown onto the roof, and the clubrooms were sprayed with machine-gun fire. No one was injured but the building was burnt to the ground. By August of the same year, St Enda's had been rebuilt only to be destroyed by another bomb. After a third bomb attack in June 1973 the decision was taken not to attempt to rebuild for another 10 years. In the early part of 1974 a bomb was found in the changing rooms as players and officials were getting ready for a game. Again there were no injuries.
As the Troubles entered another murderous phase during the early part of the 1990s, St Enda's again came under attack. This time it was more sinister, as the focus of attacks switched from arson to murder. The first indication of this shift came in December 1992. A three-man UFF gang had arrived at the club to carry out a gun attack but was disturbed by a group of people who had decided to leave early. Instead of carrying out the attack on those attending the quiz night inside the building, the gang opened fire on the car of the departing members, injuring one of the women inside.
On October 25th 1993, St Enda's was again targeted, this time with a far more devastating effect. Sean Fox, now aged 72, was at his home in Harmin Park, Glengormley, a short distance from the football field. A group of men entered his house during the night and held him captive for an hour before shooting him. The UVF claimed responsibility with a telephone call to a Belfast newsroom. The club and the surrounding community were rocked to their foundations. Dermot Fox recalls: "Men like my father were individuals who took their lives in their hands to promote the Irish games. They really did, because their lives and their families' lives were at risk simply because they were involved. "Before my father was shot his name was put on the wall: `Fox You're Next'. The reason being that it was an obvious tactic, the way they picked individuals . . . (whose death) would be perceived as a threat to everybody in the area. So by shooting my father, every single Catholic and every single nationalist in this area felt threatened. It could be them next, because he was an old man of 72 years."
In the years after his murder, St Enda's officials looked for a way to provide a more lasting memorial to the life of Sean Fox. Eventually it was decided that a football tournament would be set up for clubs within Belfast, to be played in his honour; the winner would be awarded the Sean Fox Memorial Shield. So, every May Day they gather at the club to celebrate his life. Members of the Fox family come too, and in doing so they retain that contact with St Enda's which their father made so much a part of their lives.
As Dermot Fox watches the final being played and sees all the entertainment that has been provided for the families and the children around the ground, the dominant emotion he feels is pride. His father, he says, would have been proud as well.
"He would have, he would have. Hopefully now, common sense is going to prevail from now on in the whole of the North here and people will be allowed to express their culture in the way they want to as long as it doesn't interfere with anybody else. That's how it is here today. "My father would have thought that all the work, all the threats and all the suffering were worth while just to see this."
