Multiple anthems in identity parade

There was more than one occasion during the sporting onslaught of last weekend when the sheer volume of it all threatened to become suffocating. With so many images fighting for house room - the towering fielding of Clive Waterhouse in Melbourne on Friday morning, Darren Clarke's collapse on Saturday afternoon, the tumult of those closing seconds in Skopje later that same night - sensory overload was a real possibility by the time Sunday night mercifully drew the curtain down on three days of frantic activity.

But as so often, it was the small things that drove home with the greatest impact. Irish rugby internationals have always been complicated affairs when it comes to issues of identity and identification. The presence of powerful Ulster contingents, drawn almost exclusively from the Protestant tradition, on both the Ireland team and in the Lansdowne Road crowd have always been accompanied by some very complex baggage.

For the GAA children that we were, the television coverage of rugby internationals in the early 1980s was always a confusing affair. Having been reared on a strict diet of impeccably observed National Anthems at all manner of hurling and football matches, we could never figure out why the Ulster players on Ireland teams stood poker-faced and silent while the rest of their team-mates bellowed out the anthem. Our own and not our own all at the same time.

Looking back, it may well have been one of the first indications that this was not as culturally homogenous a place as we might have imagined from our closeted world of under-age GAA. It was our first introduction to the concept of difference.

So much of life here is a matter of constructing a tenable response to that difference and the preliminaries to last Sunday's game against the Australians proved just how confusing that process can be. Is the Irish rugby side the only national sporting team anywhere in the world that has two separate `anthems' played at its home games? Or should that be three, given that both the crowd and the Irish players on Sunday seemed to invest the half-time rendition of The Fields Of Athenry with more enthusiasm and more gusto than they mustered for either of the pre-match efforts? Confused? You will be.

While this `multiple anthems' approach might seem like a dreadfully fudged get-out strategy, it actually represents a very interesting solution to what is, on this side of the Border at least, an extremely emotive issue. The fact that Northern players and supporters alike are uncomfortable with the singing of Amhran na bhFiann before rugby internationals may be unpalatable for some, but that does not make those difficulties any less real.

Whatever its dubious artistic merits, the recent introduction of Ireland's Call to the Irish rugby musical lexicon at least shows a willingness by the IRFU to engage with the whole issue of anthems and identity. Implicit in the approach is a recognition that at a national level Irish rugby is very much a broad coalition of interests and viewpoints. The fact that they have been held together in what, at times, has been something of an uneasy alliance represents a triumph for pragmatism and common-sense.

And if anyone doubts the worth of that farsightedness, they should take a long hard look at the detrimental effect of the Irish Football Association's laissez-faire approach to the same problems. For decades nothing whatsoever was done to address the culture that had been allowed to grow up alongside the Northern Ireland team and envelop its home games at Windsor Park. The fault-lines there went far beyond the simple issue of an anthem and in the absence of any efforts to improve the situation, Northern Ireland games became no-go areas for large sections of the Catholic community here.

Initiatives over the past 18 months or so have at least recognised that the pall of sectarianism that hangs over some sections of the Windsor Park crowd is something that has to be eradicated if Northern Irish football is to be dragged kicking and screaming from the backwaters. The tragedy is that it is has taken so long for something to be done.

IN a society that almost demands the politicisation of its sporting structures and institutions, the fact that the level of Northern commitment to the Irish rugby cause remains undiminished is nothing short of astonishing. By Saturday afternoon every available train seat out of Belfast to Dublin the following morning had been sold and Ulster rugby followers made up a sizeable proportion of the 48,000-strong crowd at Lansdowne Road.

Unlikely as it may have seemed even 10 years ago, it is beginning to look like the cobbled together compromises and accommodations that have sustained an all-Ireland rugby team through some of the darkest days of our recent history could represent a blueprint for how things should be in the future. One of rugby's greatest triumphs has been to take the element of surrender out of the willingness to compromise. It has been able to move away from the old culture of suspicion of equal give and equal take.

Of course, all the old caveats about Northern rugby remain. It draws predominantly on a middle-class culture of men-only dinners and the old-school tie network that has, for the most part, been cocooned from the worst excesses of the past 30 years. But it has survived and emerged out the other side as a formidably strong sporting and cultural force. There are many who still harbour strong reservations, but Ulster rugby's greatest achievement has been its highly developed self-preservation instinct.

From Rule 21 right through to the National Anthem this is a period in our history when many of what we regarded as sporting and cultural certainties are being challenged. Movement forward does not come without its problems and along the way there are some tough decisions to be made. Whether we like it our not, rugby has embraced the spirit of that age.

There are times when the cultural minefield in which it operates takes the game into the realm of the truly surreal. As the television cameras panned along the line of Irish players during the lengthy playing of the anthems last Sunday, one honed in on Andy Ward. The New Zealander, with the Irish wife and son, who now represents Ulster and Ireland, was rooted firmly to the spot. Ward's right arm clutched the badge on his shirt and he sang with passion, determination and commitment.

The tune and the words may themselves have meant little, but in those few minutes Andy Ward was expressing his strong sense of place and his fierce pride in what he has become part of. On an epic weekend, it was perhaps the most enduring image of all.