Time for greater sense of neutrality

For the purposes of this short exercise you will be required to suspend your sporting disbelief for a few minutes and imagine the following scenario. It may make understanding a bizarre and manifestly unfair situation just a little easier.

The extra time at the end of last Sunday's FA Cup semi-final between Manchester United and Arsenal has just ended. Within minutes, English FA officials are briefing representatives from the clubs and waiting journalists. A decision has been made, they tell them, not to stage the replay at a neutral venue. The game will instead be played at Old Trafford because the police have indicated that they would prefer that as it is easier to provide security. Arsenal protest, but there is no right of appeal and they are told to either play the game on Manchester United's ground or face exclusion from the competition.

Now, back to football reality, Northern-style. For Manchester United and Arsenal, substitute Linfield and Cliftonville. Last Saturday they played out a 1-1 draw in the semi-final of the Irish Cup at, where else, Windsor Park. The established practice is that semi-finals are played at neutral venues and in fact the second semi-final at the weekend, between Portadown and Ballymena, was played at Glentoran's Oval ground. But the Linfield-Cliftonville game was fixed for Linfield's home pitch by the Irish Football Association, which cited security advice from the RUC as the reason for the choice of venue.

Cliftonville were understandably aggrieved. Their manager, Marty Quinn, registered his protests, though his team had little option but to go ahead with the game and thus give Linfield the considerable fillip of home advantage. The news that they would have to return to Windsor for the replay next Tuesday seemed to offend against all principles of natural justice. "It's supposed to be a neutral venue," Quinn said. "But we are simply ordered to concede advantage by the Irish FA and the security authorities."

Cliftonville did not even have the temerity to suggest that, as a quid pro quo, the replay should be at Solitude, their home patch. They were content for the tie to be switched to neutral territory. But this was also deemed unacceptable. When the decision was queried, the input of those same "security authorities" into the decision was again highlighted. They insisted that the game should go ahead at Windsor Park because there were fewer problems in policing the opposing sets of fans. But implicit in the decision was an acceptance that there were certain areas and certain grounds which they were unable to make secure or safe. The implications of that are far-reaching for the future of all football here.

It is also a decision unsupported by recent experience. Nobody here is behind the door in acknowledging the fairly fundamental problems which course through the veins of local football. If the product itself is poor, then the general behaviour of those who are its consumers Saturday after Saturday is even worse. The long-running antipathy between the supporters of Cliftonville and Linfield, an antagonism that is firmly grounded in religious and territorial confrontation, is the best known of the petty little hatreds which permeate Irish League football.

But in the midst of all that there have been the smallest flickers of encouragement. For almost 30 years Cliftonville had been required by the Irish League to concede home advantage in league games. As a result, all encounters between the two sides were played at Windsor Park. But in the past 18 months there has been a thawing in the relationship between the two clubs, thanks mainly to more enlightened leadership in the upper echelons of both.

Last November Linfield travelled to north Belfast and played a league game at Solitude for the first time since the early 1970s. Granted, it required a high-profile and extremely labour-intensive RUC operation to enable the game to go ahead and, granted, the small number of visiting Linfield fans had to be bussed in and out in a military-style convoy.

But the important thing was that the game was played and despite the "lively" atmosphere, it all passed off without incident. So much so in fact that Linfield have been back to Solitude since then with a few more supporters but again without any violence. In the bigger scheme of things, it may look like a fairly inconsequential development, but, in the context of the paralysis that existed before this, was a pretty radical change. Things, remember, tend to move very slowly. But the pace with which the attitudes and pre-dispositions of the game's administrators change is even more pedestrian. As the only club in the Irish League Premier Division with substantial support from the Catholic community, Cliftonville has always ploughed a lone furrow. The club's supporters have a fairly highly-developed sense of grievance and while some of their paranoia is groundless, much of it has firm grounding in reality.

The current Irish Cup charade is only the latest in a long line of slights. Only 12 months ago there was more evidence as the competition for the Premier League title went to the last day of the season. Cliftonville had been setting the pace for most of the year but with Linfield still in touch, they needed to hold their nerve. The team with the better result on the last day would be champions but for some unfathomable reason Cliftonville were ordered to kick off their game against Glentoran a full hour before Linfield began against Coleraine.

As it was, Cliftonville got the point they required to become champions but not before Linfield were placed in the happy position of knowing what they needed to do in their game. In any other football community this would have caused consternation but here the decision was met with little more than a few indifferent shoulder shrugs.

The game of football here has been administered in the same way for generations and it takes a long, long time for entrenched mindsets to be broken down. But this is a debate about parity and equal treatment, both of which are fundamental social, and by extension, sporting building blocks. The divisions that are riven through every level of football will not go away without some positive action and there will be no discernible improvement until there is a clear perception that the playing field is level for everyone.

There is no need to be naive or unrealistic about this. Cliftonville v Linfield is never going to be one the great Northern ecumenical sporting experiences. History has preordained that. But nor should it be an easy vehicle for poisonous attitudes and malevolent intentions. Linfield's return to Solitude for league matches proves that no established practice and no out-dated attitude are cast in stone. But patently unjust decisions like one which arbitrarily disposes with the concept of a neutral venue to favour one side over another show how far there is to go.