A national for two nations

On the 28th of October, the 10th edition of the Rugby 15-a-side World Cup concluded with the victory of South Africa. The Springboks became champions for the fourth time in their history, following the success they achieved four years ago in Japan in the final against England. This time it was New Zealand who stopped on the second step of the podium, giving up on the score of 12-11 only at the end of a game that was as exciting as it was chaotic, punctuated by mistakes and penalties – including the red to Kiwi captain Sam Cane, unprecedented in a final.

Yet, the All Blacks are not the only ones to have left the competition with more than one regret. Great expectations also accompanied the path of the host team, France, which was prematurely interrupted in the quarter-finals against the future world champions. Great disappointment followed the exit, also in the quarter-finals, of Ireland, who were at the top of the world rankings until their elimination and the only team that could rival the hosts in terms of stadium support. For a month and a half, in fact, huge groups of people dressed in green invaded the Hexagon, and in particular the Stade de France in Paris, stormed at every match by over 40,000 Irish fans.

Those who travelled on the metro to Saint-Denis, in the direction of the stadium, in those days were overwhelmed by a euphoric stream of people with a strong Gaelic accent, intoxicated by the joyous smell of sweat and beer, and squeezed so tightly that they were out of breath. Hard to imagine a (literally) more united and compact fanbase. Even harder to imagine that so much fervour would gather around a national team that actually contains two, and which brings together the fronts of one of the most balkanised European territories of the last century. Yes, because what we usually call Ireland is actually the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), representing both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Bridges and borders

For more than a hundred years, nationalist and unionist sentiments have torn the Emerald Isle apart, even after the 1921 split between an independent Catholic South and a Protestant North loyalist to London. Until 1998, in fact, Belfast's stay in the UK faltered as the city bled during the so-called Troubles. This term refers to the fratricidal conflict that swept Northern Ireland for thirty years over the reunification of the island, setting Unionist paramilitary forces against the nationalists of the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Some 3,600 people lost their lives there, while the number of wounded exceeded thirty thousand.

Yet, there is one place that managed to escape violent sectarianism, constituting a kind of unshakeable free zone, and that is the rugby pitch. Yesterday as today, the IRFU brings together the best talents and unanimous support from all four provinces of the island, each with its own culture and flag.

These are Leinster, the Dublin province with the harp symbol, Connacht, the western province on whose flag appears a black eagle and a white hand wielding a sword, Munster, in the south-west, with three golden crowns on a blue background, and finally Ulster, which includes most of Northern Ireland and is symbolised by the red hand of Ulster. All four coats of arms are included in the IRFU flag, which as always appeared on the World Cup scoreboards instead of the green-white-orange tricolour of the Republic of Ireland. The very flag, first proposed in 1925, reincarnates with its longevity the capacity for compromise that has always characterised the IRFU, despite the tensions that shook the island throughout the 20th century.

The voice of the fans

"Rugby unites everyone," said Denis, waiting to enter the stadium for the group stage match against Scotland, along with his wife and five children, all dressed in green. “It's good for sport, it's good for Ireland, it's good for future prospects”. "Each province has its own identity and its own individual style of play," added Michelle, who drove the 1,200-plus kilometres between Galway and Paris to watch every IRFU match. "The team brings all these peculiarities together, so that we get stronger as a quartet."

Of course, a few minor controversies remain, for example regarding the anthem to be sung at matches, a question that has arisen since the first World Cup in 1987. The solution was to commission Irish musician Phil Coulter to sing the song 'Ireland's Call'. But even today, although unanimous in seeing it as a positive thing to have a team that includes their northern cousins, many people from Éire - the Gaelic name for the Republic of Ireland - would also like to sing their national anthem, 'Amhrán na bhFiann' ('the soldier's song'). However, young people like Aaron and Ronan also believe that 'we have to make some sacrifices to unite the communities of North and South'. And so, even 'Ireland's Call' ended up being accepted, and sung at the top of its lungs to shake the foundations of the Stade de France.

No interviewee has ever seen or heard of tensions between North and South rugby fans, not even during the Troubles. 'Clashes and riots are football stuff,' said Sean, a student at Dublin University College. It is precisely for football that there are two separate national teams, contrary to the wishes of many, who would instead prefer to see one team representing the whole island as with rugby.

It is never ‘just sport’

The structure of international sport tends to reflect that of a world divided into competing nations,' said Nicola Sbetti, professor of sports history and culture at the University of Bologna. In this context, ‘the exception of the IRFU is very significant, but not completely isolated’. Ireland itself, in fact, also has a single national team for cricket and shinty-hurling - a Gaelic-Scottish hybrid in some ways similar to hockey. Another contemporary exception is the West Indies cricket team, a legacy of colonialism. Within the British Empire, in fact, for competitive reasons, all the Caribbean were united into one team to face the British, resulting in a 'national team' that dominated the world cricket scene throughout the 1970s.

On the other hand, the professor added, 'the history of the IRFU provides a striking example of the political use of sport', and how it can take on different meanings depending on the context and the actors involved. As also reported in an article in the Irish Examiner, in fact, the IRFU survived the partition of the island essentially because its exponents in Dublin harboured unionist sentiments, and opposed the breakaway of the neighbouring province of Ulster. The bulwark of the Irish nationalists was instead the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), founded in 1884 to promote a sporting culture antagonistic to that of London, which formalised a number of disciplines such as Gaelic football and hurling to counter the growing success of the British in football, rugby, and cricket. At the time, therefore, the political contrast between nationalists and unionists found its translation in the sports advocated by the GAA and those of English origin to which the IRFU belonged.

Since then, however, the popularity of the oval ball has grown and, in the words of the Professor, today rugby and the IRFU attract 'a sense of belonging that goes beyond the national division'. Yet another demonstration of sport's ability to break down or raise boundaries through the emotions and transport it arouses, in light of which one can never say, after all, that it is 'just sport'.

Interviews in Saint-Denis conducted by the author with the support of Caterina Sanniti and Tommaso De Bellis

Interviews at Dublin University College conducted by Sebastian Morabito

Interview with Professor Nicola Sbetti conducted by the Author

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