Writing in today's Sunday Independent, Joe Brolly reveals he was given an advance screening of the upcoming BBC documentary about Crossmaglen Rangers. The documentary has been two years in the making, is entitled True North and will air on BBC tomorrow night at 9pm. The column reveals the measures British troops took to try and quell unrest in the area Brolly terms "bandit country". We will allow Brolly to describe it in his own, inimitable way:
There is archive footage of the barracks being constructed in 1976. By then, Cross had been christened bandit country and the empire decided to build an enormous fortress on top of their Gaelic football field. So, in an act of community relations that would have embarrased the KKK, they plonked this monstrosity down as though it had been dropped from a helicopter, and duly reaped the whirlwind...
Quickly the barracks became a symbol of oppression. The Gaelic football pitch a symbol of resistance.
Crossmaglen have turned that resistance into a conveyor belt of success, and the mindset propelling their relentless desire for victory was evocatively summed up by current manager Oisin McConville:
Wasn't it great to stick the two fingers up to them and say regardless of what you do, you can land your helicopters on our pitch, you can build your barracks on top of us, you can throw our clothes and our bags out on the street when you search our cars on the way to training...Wasn't it great to say to them, 'But fuck youse, we're gonna win an All-Ireland anyway'.
An extraordinary perspective. The documentary sounds fantastic, a reminder that you can see it on BBC Northern Ireland at 9pm tomorrow night.
[Sunday Independent]
