Who am I? I'm still working on it

I was chairing a debate in the National Library of Scotland last night (get me!) about the impact independence might have on Scottish culture. Oranised by Irish Pages and Gutter Magazine, it brought eight authors (four Scots, four Irish) together to debate what might happen to Scotland if independence came to pass, how had independence changed Irish culture and how might Scottish independence impact on Northern Ireland.
It was an interesting debate which shot off in all sorts of interesting directions. At one point the Irish poet Thomas McCarthy argued that Scots, if they do opt for independence, should then feel a duty of care to Ulster Protestants - the Scots Irish - in the same way as the Irish Republic felt a duty to Northern Irish Catholics. In reply, the Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson pointed out that many Northern Irish Protestants might not appreciate Scots telling them they were now responsible for them.
I'm still not sure how I feel about the idea of independence for Scotland. I'm not bothered by the economic arguments particularly - we are all in such deep waters when it comes to economy I'm not convinced it will make a huge difference - but I do like the idea that it would mean Scotland would be forced to grow up a little, to take responsibility for itself (if not those on the other side of the North Channel), to renew its own idea of itself. That's a challenge but also an opportunity.
What has any of this to do with sport? Well, sport is itself at times a projection of identity. We are currently in the midst of a huge pre-Olympic publicity drive which is sending out messages about Britishness.
Some of those messages - however you feel about Britishness in general - seem hugely positive to me. The Olympic Britain we are being offered is an ambitious, multicultural, inclusive place. Now you can argue that this is PR hype, but it's an attractive vision and sport is one of the areas where multiculturalism plays out in a relatively equal playing field (we are all marked by the realities of class, gender and race but if you get to the playing fields and you have talent then there's a chance your talent is what you will be judged on).
As someone who has written a book about feeling Northern Irish mostly because of Gerry Armstong's goal against Spain in the 1982 World Cup I suppose I would naturally argue that sport can define identity. But why sport? I love 1980s English pop music made in Manchester, the poetry of Philip Larkin, the films of Michael Powell and the paintings of Paul Nash - all which makes me a huge Anglophile, And yet I don't feel English at all.
For a while - in the eighties - I did feel Scottish, wanting to embrace something that wasn't Northern Irish, an identity I was keen to get away from at the time. And to do that I started becoming very interested in Scottish sport - Scottish football in particular. But before long I drifted back to liking English football because I had an emotional connection with it. It's what I had grown up watching. My Northern Irishness manifested itself via English football bizarrely enough.
I'm not sure what the point I'm trying to make is (obviously) but I guess it's got something to do with the idea that identity is fluid. It isn't fixed. Or doesn't have to be. We can remake ourselves in whatever way we want.
Some, of course, don't want to. In Northern Ireland this week Linfield fans went on what the local papers claimed was "a rampage" after their side had been beaten in a Setanta Cup tie with Derry City. The event was marked by claim and counterclaim but it is just another example of how football in the north allows a platform for a form of sectarian theatricality (the Old Firm provide the same in Scotland).
And yet the first leg of the Cup saw Martin McGuinness make his first visit to Windsor Park. In January Peter Robinson travelled to Armagh for the final of the McKenna Cup - the first time he had attended a GAA match. Token gestures you could argue but the fact that they are being made at all seems worth applauding. Robinson in the past had been a bitter critic of the GAA for its Republican links.
And the other week the DUP mayor of Ballymoney Ian Stevenson gave his public support to his local GAA team Lochgiel Shamrocks. Stevenson had recently found out that his grandfather played for the Shamrocks in the 1920s. As a result a culture he presumably felt no part of has provided a personal entry point for him.
The point is nothing is fixed. Identity may be something inherited but it is also to a large degree created. We are who we think we are. And sometimes we learn that who we think we are is only because we haven't got all the evidence to hand. Or because we've thought better of it.

Match rating

"Jamieson weaves together sport and a history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland together to produce an account of sectarianism that, incredibly after all this time and all that has happened, still has the power to shock."

The author and critic Lesley McDowell reviewed Whose Side Are You On? in the latest issue of The Scottish Review of Books. It's first rate, she says. Nice review. You can read it in full here: http://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=468:gallimaufry-lesley-mcdowell&catid=55:volume-8-issue-1-2012&Itemid=149

And just a reminder that I am appearing at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow on Sunday alongside Rodge Glass, Alan Bissett and Richard Wilson. Details here: http://www.ayewrite.com/programme/events/Pages/Football-and-Sectarianism.aspx

See you there maybe?

Whose Side - the live experience!

So, next Sunday I've been invited to speak at the Aye Write festival in Glasgow. I'm joining a discussion on football and sectarianism with a trio of writers who in their various ways are engaged with the subject of the beautiful game and it's sometimes baleful side-effects.
Rodge Glass's new novel Bring Me The Head of Ryan Giggs is a fictional take on Manchester United's golden generation, following one of the Beckham/Neville/Scholes generation that didn't quite make it. I'm about 80 pages in at the moment and it's a wonderfully pacy, engaging read. Rodge is a Man U fan I believe but we'll not hold that against him.
Alan Bissett's latest novel Pack Men also has a Manchester link. It's a fictional account of what happened on that fateful night when Rangers fans went on the rammy in the city in 2008 on UEFA Cup final night ("the battle of Picadilly Gardens" as some called it).

And, because all these things tend to dovetail beautifully, Rangers FC is at the heart of the book of the third speaker Richard Wilson. Richard is a freelance journalist and contributor to The Herald and Sunday Herald. His book Inside The Divide looks in depth at the Old Firm.
I'm there just to make up the numbers but it should be an interesting afternoon at Glasgow's Mitchell Library. next Sunday (Kick off 3.30pm).  For more details of the event visit http://www.ayewrite.com/programme/events/Pages/Football-and-Sectarianism.aspx
And if you make it along say hello.

Me and Piers Morgan

My Herald colleague (and friend) Susan Swarbrick has sent me a picture of Whose Side Are You On? on her bookshelf. It's nice to know someone has not only read the book but decided to keep hold of it too. Not sure about the company I find myself in. I suspect that she's deliberately manipulated it so that the likes of Piers Morgan and Toby Young are also in the frame,probably because she knows how much I hate them - the kind of  irrational hatred you can have for people you've never met.

Morgan of course is a Gooner and that smarts all the more today after yesterday's debacle at the Emirates.

Ibrox Blues

I was at Ibrox on Saturday for the Sunday Herald. You can read my report here: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/this-was-about-raging-against-the-storm-engulfing-their-club.16793949
A couple of days on I've been thinking a bit more about the afternoon. There was something impressive about the Rangers fans' response, the scale and noise of it. But it was tarnished by the singing of sectarian songs. It was as if in their anger they lashed out. Only they lashed out in the wrong direction.
I noted lots of Northern Irish accents before the game, a reminder that the Old Firm hold a strong hold on the hearts of many in the north. That said, growing up I didn't know anyone who supported Rangers or Celtic. In the 1970s we watched English football on the telly and pretended to be English teams in our kickabouts on the local green.
I don't know if anyone has calculated the number of travelling fans who make the journey across the North Channel on a Saturday, but I would have thought as many of them head to Old Trafford as Ibrox or Celtic Park. Certainly when I lived in Northern Ireland the majority of people I knew were United fans.
Going home in the last ten, fifteen years, though, I have noted more and more Rangers and Celtic tops on Northern Irish streets. It's a mark of identity of course. It says whose side you are on. Me, I never could afford a Spurs top when I was young and I don't think I'd look good in one now that I can.

Bits and Pieces

Sorry, things have been quiet around Whose Side acres of late. Too much work, too little time. But I was prompted by a couple of things. First there was a tweet from former world boxing champion (and Belfast boy)Wayne McCullough which showed him holding a copy of Whose Side Are You On?, a picture that understandably made my day. Wayne gave me a great interview for my chapter of boxing in the book. If you hurry you can get his own biography on Kindle.

Then there was a comment from a Whose Side? reader Peter Baxter. Peter was responding to my choice of favourite football books. He mentioned Gary Imlach's excellent My Father and other Working Class Football Heroes and Joe McGinniss's The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (which I really need to get around to reading).
It reminded me that I've got to get a move on with my list of the 50 best sports books. Any suggestions always welcome. There's the pick of the many, many great boxing books for a start. And I'm sure there are many fine books on less mainstream sports. I recall loving Walking On Water, Andy Martin's book on surfing 20 odd years ago. Are there any great ice hockey books, I wonder? Can anyone enlighten me?
Talking of books I should point you in the direction of bespoke Scottish publisher BackPage who are just about to publish Graham Hunter's Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team In the World. They also published a fine, fine book by a Herald colleague of mine, James Morgan. A fellow countryman and Spurs fan, James's In Search Of Alan Gilzean works as both an insight into football culture in the 1960s and 1970s and a neat little mystery story. Recommended.
James has promised to write me a guest blog entry about his own favourite Northern Irish sporting hero and I'll try and I'm hoping I'll get some other writers to do the same. Again, suggestions welcome.
Oh and there might be some book festival activity this year. I'll keep you posted.

Bullets and birdies - 2011, a year in review

During the first few months of 2011 as I frantically worked on rewrites of Whose Side Are You On? it sometimes seemed as if I was never going to get to the end of the book as new twists and turns in the story of Northern Irish sport seemed to be happening, at times, on a daily basis.

Not all of them were positive. In January Celtic manager Neil Lennon was sent bullets in the post. A few months later it emerged that he has also been sent not one but two parcel bombs. Lennon’s crime was that he was a Northern Irish Catholic managing a Glasgow team that makes much of its Irish tradition and history.

The long and often ignoble history of the Old Firm proves that the divisions that marked Northern Irish history in recent decades has also marked other countries and cultures. This week the Scottish government has passed a law to tackle sectarian singing at football matches. Like Northern Irish football, Scottish football has long been an ampitheatre for the performance of sectarian divisions. Some of it is just banter, some of it bitter.

Whether a law can address the latter is a matter of some debate. In the past – in the eighties when racism was a problem in British football, or when Neil Lennon was a Celtic and Northern Ireland player and was the target of sectarian abuse and a death threat – it has required fans themselves to play a part in changing the culture.

But cultures do change. The most symbolic event in Irish sport this year was the Queen’s visit to Croke Park, the home of the GAA, in Dublin, the prime symbol of Britishness visiting the prime symbol of Irishness. As I said in a postscript in the book it was a reminder that old hatreds can fade.

This stuff can’t be ignored but the story of Northern Irish sport in 2011 has been played out on the greens of America and England and on the baize in York.

For a while there I thought Mark Allen’s final flourish in the UK snooker championship this month might be a replay of Dennis Taylor’s famous 1985 World Championship victory in 1985. Taylor came from behind to take the title from Steve Davis that year. It wasn’t quite to be in 2011 and Judd Trump managed to claim the one frame he needed to win after Allen seemed to be closing in. Still, Allen had made it to his first final, and made a name for himself (picking a fight with Barry Hearn helped a little there). Certainly his dream of emulating Taylor and Alex Higgins and becoming a world champion is a lot more believable after his performance this month.

He wasn’t the only nearly man this year. The thrill of Ireland’s victory over Australia in the Rugby World Cup faded rather quickly when the last hurrah of the golden generation (Driscoll, O’Hara etc) sputtered out in the quarter final against a young Welsh side. In football Northern Ireland could only dream of such levels of success. The departure of Nigel Worthington marked another managerial story that fleetingly held promise but ended in failure (some stories bore from repetition).

Michael O’Neill currently seems to be the favourite to replace  him. If he is, hopefully Jim Magilton will join him. Together their presence may go some way to persuading young players from the nationalist community that they have a place in the Northern Ireland international set-up. Then again, when the Republic of Ireland take the field against Croatia next June the appeal of playing in Dublin rather than playing in Belfast will be self-evident to some (footballers are footballers first and foremost; they want to play at the highest level they can).

At least we can console ourselves with our memories next summer. It will be 30 years since Northern Ireland beat Spain in the 1982 World Cup. Gerry Armstrong’s goal that night remains one of my most vivid sporting memories. Fortunately, 2011, offered a couple more.

Most of them happened on the golf course. The fact that in the last couple of years  Northern Irish golfers have won three major titles is frankly astonishing. It’s difficult to say which of this year’s major winners has the better story. Sentiment might go with Darren Clarke. The 42-year-old playing in his twentieth Open became only the second Northern Irish player to win the Open after Fred Daly in 1947 and the oldest winner since Roberto Di Vicenzo in 1967. In his thank you speech he spoke of his children and his late wife Heather. “There’s obviously somebody watching from up there and I know she’d be very proud. But I think she’d be more proud of my two boys.”

Clarke’s victory at Royal St Georges was a wonderful late flowering of an undoubted yet often underachieving talent. Rory McIlroy’s success in the US Open was the long-expected coronation of a remarkable talent. But I think McIlroy’s success may just be the greater achievement, if only because of his failure a couple of months before at the US Masters when he’d thrown away a major title during a nightmare final round.

That he was able to come back from that and play some peerless golf in Maryland was a mark of his talent and a mark of his mental strength. His story is perhaps the most exciting of a great year because it comes with the promise of much more to come.

That both the US and British Open titles currently reside in Northern Ireland is one of those almost stupidly wonderful sporting boasts we can make at the moment.  I work in Glasgow where Martin Boyce’s victory in this year’s Turner Prize has led to calls for the artworld’s premiere prize to come to Glasgow in the near future (it’s in Stroke City – London/derry – in 2013). One hopes that McIlroy and Clarke’s successes this year might prompt the Royal and Ancient to think about Royal Portrush as a venue for the Open in the near future.

But that’s for tomorrow. Today is for remembering this year’s yesterdays. And for all the bad news stories we’ve been subjected to there have been enough good ones to make us look forward to the year ahead with real hope. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get to see Spurs win the Premier League. Oh come on, let me dream.