It's only a game

At a time of national mourning – I’m talking football here – it seems churlish to look beyond our immediate grief. True, our loss is immense. We have come to expect more of life. But look beyond we must. Because there’s a lot going on out there beside which our failure to qualify for the World Cup pales into insignificance.
For example, tens of thousands have died in the massive earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir. Two tectonic plates pressed against one another until one slipped deep below the earth and that was that.
That vast range of mountains – the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Himalayas – is geologically young and unstable. It is still being made. The whole vast region is still shifting and growing. Rock falls and avalanches are routine.
Every year dozens are killed while traversing the rough tracks that cross from Pakistan to China. While these are affectionately called highways, the emphasis is on the high rather than the way.
There isn’t much more one can say. The earth’s crust flicked. Buildings collapsed, tens of thousands died. Football may be important but on mature reflection it isn’t more important than life, is it?
In that regard, when we can rip our gaze from the horrors on the television, there are things to celebrate, things that offer a faint but inarguable hope that life might be regaining its importance. The IRA ceasefire is one.
It now seems genuine. The decommissioning operation was witnessed by two clergymen who said they spent ‘many days watching the meticulous and painstaking way in which General de Chastelain, Brigadier General Tauno Nieminen and Ambassador Andrew Sens went about the task of decommissioning the huge amounts of explosives, arms and ammunition’.
If the loyalists follow through, that’ll be even better. But it may be harder for them. They have no electoral mandate, no significant legitimate presence in the new scenarios that are emerging.
Just how big their leap must be can be seen in the coverage of the murder of Jim Gray, the former UDA leader. Gray – known locally as Doris Day for his flamboyant dress sense and bisexual lifestyle – had recently been expelled from the UDA.
Flamboyant, bisexual, unstable, he was regarded as a liability by the organisation, being heavily involved in drugs and racketeering. Gray was a very unpleasant man, a kind of loyalist Saddam and few mourned his passing.
But there are many others not so different, deeply involved in drugs and rackets. In the absence of political identity, what’s left? Rooting them out and weaning them off this lucrative gangsterism will take a lot of time and trouble.
Yet, there’s hope. We’ve seen the anti-racket agencies close in on Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, allegedly the IRA Chief of Staff. The Northern Ireland Assets Recovery Agency, with support from the Manchester police and the CAB in Ireland assisted by Gardaí searched domestic and business premises in Manchester and Dundalk. It is alleged that Murphy has amassed a multimillion pound fortune through cross-border smuggling. According to the BBC’s Underworld Rich List he has accumulated up to £40million…
Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If doctors and farmers are chased for tax debts and ill-gotten gains, why not republicans?
And it isn’t just ill-gotten gains they need chasing on. There are murders and disappearances too.
The McCartney sisters showed just how much chasing is involved, how much grit is needed and how resistant to justice republicans are. There’s a lot of dirty work at the crossroads.
And it isn’t just in their heartlands. Last month the sisters came to Dublin to show support for the family of Joseph Rafferty who was shot dead by an IRA gunman in a west Dublin housing estate in April. According to his family the murder was ‘a carbon copy’ of Robert McCartney’s killing.
Rafferty had been threatened after he ‘stood up to’ a person who assaulted his younger sister. Garda sources have confirmed that the suspect in the murder had been a member of the IRA.
The dead man’s family added that the suspect was active in Sinn Féin. That party’s Daithi Doolan described the murder as a ‘cowardly and brutal act’ and said that those responsible should be brought to justice. That’ll be the day. Ask the McCartneys.
But you see what I mean. All this stuff is going on and we feel bad about football? Let’s get some perspective. It’s not like the mountain fell in on your village, is it?
Yeah, I know it would be great to be packing up the old kit bag and planning for Germany. Gawd, what a summer we’d have. But at the end of the day it’s only a game. And the beauty of it is that the European Championship is just around the corner. Hope rises even as it dies!