In the early 1970s, before Northern Ireland descended into an era of outright fear, a call came for more Catholics to join the RUC. The inter-denominational balance was overwhelmingly tilted and Stormont was eager to increase the Catholic representation on from its meagre six per cent.

Seβn Hughes was a young west Belfast man on a good path then: newly married with a young child and secure employment as a clerical officer with Belfast Corporation. His leisure hours were given mostly to the O'Donovan Rossa GAA club on the Falls Road. He kicked a bit of junior football but immersed himself in the Irish language, singing and encouraging youngsters to play sport.

"He didn't need to join the RUC, it would have been easier for him to say 'right, this doesn't affect me, I'm doing fine'," recalls Rossa PRO Terry Gibbons.

"But he decided he'd make a stand and try and initiate a Catholic recruitment drive. So he joined up and continued to live in west Belfast, where he grew up. It was after that the RUC really began to show its hand and it became a hated force around this community. So one evening Seβn was at home and a knock came on his door. And that was it. He was shot. He was paralysed, his life was ruined."

Next week, O'Donovan Rossa's 500 members will gather at their clubhouse, a dark old building with the foreboding look of a Masonic lodge about it, to vote on Rule 21.

Rossa is one of the aristocratic establishments of Belfast's GAA community, celebrating its 85th anniversary later this month. It is the home club of football manager Brian White, of former hurling legend Ciarβn Barr. President McAleese's husband kicked ball for the club. Back in 1905, when the shops and slogans of the Falls Road were just green fields, the O'Donovan Rossa clubhouse was the country residence of Lord Baden-Powell. The members still get a chuckle out of that.

Now, it is a cosy GAA fraternity, welcoming and proud, a place for pints and an obelisk to long-disbanded teams and players, smiling in sepia. 1989 was perhaps the club's most famous year, when they made it to the All-Ireland hurling club final against Buffers Alley.

"I remember us coming down to Croke Park for that final, and see then, Rossa really felt part of Ireland," says Noel Carrabine. "We were treated so well. We should have beaten Buffers Alley, too, but ah, that was our own fault. All the great names of Wexford hurling were there. And president John Dowling called O'Donovan Rossa the sleeping giant of Gaelic games."

Carrabine was chairman and a selector with Rossa then. Pleasurable as the memories are, it was a strange time too. In the semi-final, the Belfast team had stunned Patrickswell down in Limerick but the euphoria just evaporated after the final whistle when the Patrickswell selector, former Limerick hurler Tony O'Brien, collapsed and died shortly afterwards.

"A fine man, God rest him. Only 46 years of age. I just remember thinking, 'it isn't this important. The games shouldn't be putting that kind of pressure'."

Because he was weighed down with troubles of his own then. Around that same time, Carrabine had been doing his rounds as a commercial traveller with a drinks company when he was held-up at gunpoint in a Belfast shop and relieved of his car. The vehicle was later used in the killing of a member of the security forces and was quickly traced to his home address.

"For years after that, my life was torment. I was charged with murder one even though there was witnesses who saw the car taken off me. And they knew in their hearts I was innocent but probably thought I had information on who was behind it. But I never did. And even when they couldn't progress with the charge, they kept calling round for ages afterwards, kicking in the door at five in the morning."

The gravity of his situation never scared him because he was felt that his innocence was irrefutable but it was the whisperings, the implicit murmurs that caused him mental grief. "They would say to me, 'the UVF know your name. Know your job, where you live, you've got a problem. We don't believe you know nothing. You've got a problem, life's a bitch'. I remember being stopped in Keady, 50 mile down the road by the UDA and them telling me, 'oh aye, we know all about you'.

Being a member of the GAA, Carrabine believes, didn't exactly put a gloss on the RUC's perception of him. When he was chairman of the club, he was called down to meet the chief constable at Woodburn RUC station and told that all O'Donovan Rossa members would have to carry membership cards.

"I told him know, that our name was in Irish and that carrying a card like that would get you killed if you were stopped by the wrong people. He said he'd close the club down so I says 'grand but you'll go to court then'. Other clubs around here were made carry the cards but not us."

Experiences. These are what people like Noel Carrabine will carry when they sit down to ponder Rule 21 next week. Like any member you will meet in the clubhouse, he has a conflicting attitude towards it. He knows that if a nationalist club like Rossa voted to scrub the rule, it would be perceived as a monumental gesture of goodwill around the city. Understands that in reality now, it is no more than a stick for critics to whip the organisation with, an embarrassment and a relic of the past.

He believes, too, that come special congress on November 17th, Rule 21 will trot off to the graveyard after a landslide and that members of the British army and the police force will be free to seek membership of the Rossa. He knows that when all is said, Rule 21 does no good for anyone.

And yet, and yet. Terry Gibbons writes eloquently in this week's Andersonstown News about why the Rule should go and then postscripts his piece with the revelation that he will vote to retain it. He understands that from afar, from the south, this white-knuckled grip on a rule ordained in the pre-electric age, seems foolish.

"It's like this," Gibbons says, "people in this community would be highly suspicious of how the new police force will operate, that it will be the RUC under a different name. People want to see a real change, not a cosmetic change - the whole attitude will have to be revised. And that will take time. All of us, everyone in this community, have had unpleasant experiences at the hands of the RUC. And not so long ago."

His words are echoed by other prominent Belfast GAA men. "There is a lot of talk about this great new police force but the same people who took part in beating, torturing and shoot-to-kill are still in charge," says Sarsfields chairman Fred Heatley in this weeks 'News.

A young Rossa club man, who prefers to go nameless, gives his view on Rule 21. "It's gotta go, purely as a civil rights matter. Sinn FΘin can't be harping on about civil rights and then have us keep this. It's got to go both ways." Asked if he might ever join the new police force, he shakes his head and asserts that none of his friends would consider it either.

Rossa club-man Herbie Slane sees this as the heart of the matter.

"If this youngster, from a new generation born in 1980, has no problem with Rule 21 going but wouldn't dream of joining the force, you have to ask why. What is the stumbling block? It's about hurt, years of hurt and the healing process takes time. Rule 21 has to go but we feel this is too soon. Maybe when the new police force is unarmed, like the bobbies in England, maybe that'll be the time. But the notion of a member of the police force arriving for training in full uniform and armed is just too raw for many people around here to accept."

The vote to retain Rule 21 will be a last stand, a last shout of principle for the Belfast GAA nationalist community. Money, they feel, is driving the GAA's central authority on this issue and the wishes of six-county Ulster, its voice, will be ignored. All they can do is vote in solidarity with Derry, Armagh and, most likely, Tyrone: places where GAA members have had experiences similar to their own.

The fear stories are endless. A famous one tells of a minibus of Rossa men heading to a hurling match on July 12th. Daft, in retrospect but youth and foolishness prevailed. The party was stopped by a patrol in the Ards Peninsula about 5.30 p.m. on a seething hot day. This was 1981 and a mood of paranoia and fear was still fresh just two summers after the IRA's Mountbatten and Narrow Water massacres. The police consulted at length and sitting in the sweltering bus, the team members grew extremely uneasy.

Hurleys were gripped and after the players were ordered out of the bus, some men feared the worst. Heavy words and threats were exchanged and, eventually, one of the Rossa players told the officer to 'get the armoured car the f--- off the road' or they'd drive through it. Then they sped through and registered a complaint the next day. Afterwards, they heard that security members of that area were being investigated for terrorist links.

It works both ways, of course. GAA clubs are a meeting points for nationalists, hence the association has close ties to Sinn FΘin. And prior to 1994, nationalist paramilitaries would also have been members.

"It really would have been impossible to separate those elements," says Herbie Slane. "That's the way it was."

Former O'Donovan Rossa members have, to use the phrase "been killed in conflict". Almost all members over the age of 40 were interned at one point or another. But the club has always been a strictly clean and licensed entity, always above board. It has its own traditions after all, age-old principles that were dusty long before the violence even begun.

Herbie Slane stresses that this turmoil isn't about bigotry or even really about the RUC. It's just about experience. From a home of mixed marriages, he has a first cousin in the RUC. They get on fine but still, Herbie Slane inherently distrusts the very initials, what they remind him of.

"Sometimes this is the best place in the world. But other times, it is a very scary place to live." It is impossible to spend any time in Belfast, a low-wattage, atmospheric and witty old city, without being a bit charmed by the humour. For years, laughter was the last resource and always it is at the ready. Rule 21 is a solemn topic, though.

Terry Gibbons wonders if the GAA hierarchy has paused to consider what sweeping Rule 21 into oblivion might do to clubs in nationalist Ulster. Noel Carrabine declares that it will strengthen the Rossa. Herbie Slane is certain that many members will just lose interest, grow disillusioned with the association and walk away. Others just don't know.

They all say O'Donovan Rossa will keep going, though. On a beautiful winter's night on The Falls, gifts are being prepared for next week's 85th anniversary dinner. President McAleese will attend, as will GAA president Sean McCague as will Gerry Adams .

Baden-Powell's old haunt will be buffed up. It will be a good night, regardless, and glasses will be raised in unison to a future that no one here can envisage with any great clarity.