Ulster football's sense of otherness has been heightened by years of prejudicial commentary from the southern media (the use of the phrase 'Free State' might be too incendiary here).
Kieran McGeeney, who has become a bit of a whipping boy for the punditocracy of late, is worried by such talk and where it might lead.
At the launch of the Ulster championship in Newry, he told reporters that it may eventually lead to the GAA segregating supporters from one another at games.
He appears to be suggesting that cross-border hostility may actually lead to aggro on the terraces.
If any other province got the same descriptive words, it would be seen as an 'anti' for that particular part of the country. It's unfortunate.
I suppose I know, coming from the North, what that kind of talk can do. I don't like it. I find it degrading...
There's never a good end to it, because they create something that is not really there. It's one of those things like religion, that people fight over when they believe in peace and God...
I hope we don't get to the point where we are segregating our supporters because of where they are from.
This is not exactly a breaking news story. Southern pundits have been turning their nose up at Ulster football since the very early years of this century.
The apotheosis was probably reached four years ago when a Laois player called Armagh's Ciaran McKeever a 'British Bastard' in the tunnel at half-time. Wound up, McKeever was sent off in the second half and was serenaded with a moving rendition of 'God Save the Queen' as he was leaving the field.
Any other similar instances have failed to reach the media.
Having played for Na Fianna and spent years taking Kildare as far as August but no further, he insists, over the sound of laughter usually, that the physicality of the southern sides is 'far in excess of the physicality you get from northern teams'.
