Our brilliant rugby team is from North and South. But a united Ireland? Not so straightforward...

THE good news story of 2019 that I’m hoping for – and millions of others on this island too – is the Irish rugby team to win this year’s World Cup in Japan. Think of the impact on the national mood were that to happen: champions of a sport that, if not global, is international and significant, and in which many of us take a great interest. Even those who don’t care for the game, or the hoopla that sometimes surrounds it, would be likely to take cheer out of a sense of national achievement. If it happens. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, given that we have never been further than the quarterfinal stage in previous competitions and sometimes didn’t even get far.

But if – and it’s a big if – it was to happen, it wouldn’t just be a national celebration in the Republic. It would be a 32-county celebration because this is a united Ireland team. And some would see that as a sign of how much more we could achieve as a united Ireland than as two separate political entities on a divided island. If only it was that simple too. First thing: far from everyone would care or celebrate the achievement (and again, let’s emphasise that this is dreaming, not an anticipation). There are many, north and south on this island, who have no interest in rugby, either because they don’t care for sport or because their preference for GAA or soccer or other sports carries into an active distaste for rugby.

Darkest

And there will be some in the North who would not support the Irish rugby team because it is representing Ireland… even if the captain (assuming he stays fit) will be Rory Best OBE (officer of the order of the British Empire and most likely Sir Rory Best if the World Cup is won).

Irish rugby has done a good job over the years of defusing political situations, of putting sport ahead of tribalism. It performed extraordinarily in the years of terrorist conflict on this island by consciously avoiding political comment.

Members of the unionist community, who regard themselves as British, have stood respectfully for Amhrán na bhFiann as the Tricolour flew at Lansdowne Road. The supporters came to Croke Park in the years when the GAA hosted Ireland’s international rugby games. Their rugby clubs eagerly welcomed teams from the south in the early years of the All-Ireland league, started at one of the darkest points of the Troubles in the North.

Rugby has served to unify, as have other sports, such as hockey and cricket to name just two. But only because there was never any attempt to take things further than sport.

Unfortunately, football on this island remains divided, and the situation made more complicated by the understandable willingness of the FAI to encourage players born in the North to declare to play for the Republic’s teams by virtue of their passport entitlements under the Good Friday Agreement.

Should the rugby team succeed at the highest level this year then the pressure on other sports to unite will intensify.

And there will be people who will ask if what happens in sport should be applied to everything else too, particularly given what we face politically this year. Brexit has already brought the question of a border poll, to allow for the creation of a real united Ireland – in all senses – into public debate.

Sinn Féin, as a 32-county political party, has been to the forefront in demanding a poll on a united Ireland should Brexit take place at the end of March.

Far-fetched

The reasoning is understandable. A majority of the people of the six counties who voted in the 2016 referendum on Brexit wanted to stay in the European Union. Opinion polls since suggest that number would increase in the event of another vote. Intriguingly, it is being suggested now by some of those polls that a majority of people in the North might opt to join a united Ireland in order to remain in the EU.

Sinn Féin, once implacably opposed to Ireland’s membership of the European Union but now committed to it, sees this as an opportunity to bring about a united Ireland.

Ironically, Sinn Féin is being helped in this by the behaviour of the Democratic Unionist Party, which wants to reject the Brexit deal that Theresa May has negotiated with the European Union – one which gives the North an economic advantage over the remainder of the United Kingdom – in favour of an inferior outcome.

However, the idea that, when push comes to shove, unionists might convert to the idea of a united Ireland because of a desire to remain in the EU may be a little far-fetched.

And even if a narrow majority in the North voted in favour of a united Ireland would we in the south then want to force the minority to enter a political entity they do not want? Would that not be as bad as it was in forcing Irish nationalists, living in what then became known to us as the Six Counties, into a divided Ireland, as happened nearly a century ago?

How confident would we be that loyalist violence would not break out in response, that people who believe themselves to be British would not feel themselves to be oppressed or discriminated against in this new united Ireland, just as nationalists were in the Northern Ireland that was forced upon them?

Fantasists

There is also the issue of whether the people of the 26 counties really want a united Ireland, something that is rarely discussed here.

Many do of course, for sentimental and emotional reasons as much as anything else, even if many have never set foot north of the border and have little or no personal contact with people who live there, and not just those who consider themselves British.

But there are many others who were more than happy with the settlement that was reached as part of the Good Friday Agreement, that kept the two jurisdictions separate, as long as there was no hard border and as much cooperation as possible to keep the peace.

And there are those who fear the economic consequences of a united Ireland, that we could not afford the costs of a Northern economy that is largely funded at present by exchequer payments from Westminster. Any logical analysis suggests that we could not afford the costs of reunification without enormous external financial assistance, either from the UK or EU, for many years.

The United Irelanders who tell us otherwise – that our economic and financial fortunes would somehow be transformed by the dynamics of reunification – are fantasists.

In fact, much as they would deny it – they have much in common with the nodeal Brexiteers. They are dangerous dreamers who believe that their ideological fantasies can overcome the realities of the modern world.

At least when some of us dream of a rugby team winning the World Cup it has no significant adverse effects, other than disappointment if it doesn’t happen. And if it were to happen the benefits would be tangible but limited and fleeting.

However, those who dream of a united Ireland, just like those who dream of Britain totally independent of a relationship with the EU, need to explain just how it would work… or take a reality check.