Review
An intriguing history that leaves some questions still unanswered, says Sean McMahon.
- Political Football – The Life and Death of Belfast Celtic
- Nonsuch
Paradise Lost
It may not now be generally known that Windsor Park, home of Belfast Celtic’s main rival, Linfield – the ‘Blues’ as they are still known – and the now defunct Celtic Park, where once the ‘Hoops’ flourished are barely half a mile apart.
Its stadium, once christened by the fans as ‘Paradise’ is now a shopping centre. Football and sectarianism are essentially local, even neighbourly. It is no surprise then that this account of a famous Belfast team is for most of Barry Flynn’s well-written and carefully researched length, a history of sectarian strife. In the same way the history of Belfast during the years of the team’s existence (1891–1949) is also a grisly catalogue of hatred and the very antithesis of sportsmanship.
Belfast is famous as being a city of two tribes (as soccer is a game of two halves) that tended to live at peace within their enclaves. It was only in the reality of competitive games that matches became battles and covert hatreds were made obvious. The actual accounts of particular games (especially the ill-fated one on 27 December 1948 when Jimmy Jones, the Celtic centre-forward, was beaten nearly to death by a group of Linfield supporters) are given in loving detail. Though this incident was the trigger that led to the club’s dissolution it is still not clear why its directors committed suppuku and deprived the Belfast Nationalist population of their paradisal team.
