One of our favourite quotations is that line from the late, beloved Liverpool FC manager, Bill Shankly, when he said ‘Sport is not just a matter of life and death … It’s much more important than that …’, writes an An Fear Rua …

To give one example. On the way to the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras were mired in a three-match elimination struggle. Prior to the games, relations between the two countries had deteriorated sharply because of disputes over border demarcations and heavy Salvadoran migration into Honduras. Rioting during the second game led to the two countries breaking off diplomatic relations. Two weeks later, they began the 100 hours long ‘Soccer War’.

Whatever about the quality of shooting of their national soccer teams, the military of the two countries managed to kill or wound almost two thousand people during the conflict. By that time, no one in either El Salvador or Honduras would have doubted the sagacity of Shankly’s comment. Oh, and the football result? El Salvador eventually won the play-off 3-2.

So, when people on the way into Croke Park on Saturday for the rugby international against England proclaimed they were there for sport not politics, they were missing the point. You cannot separate sport from politics. Indeed, the GAA itself was founded more for political than for sporting reasons. Michael Cusack excelled at rugby, cricket, running, the high jump and throwing weights. Maurice Davin was a noted athlete too. They were healthy, fit young men. If all they wanted was to engage in sport and exercise they could just as easily have continued at these sports. Instead, along with five others, in 1884 they met in Hayes’s Hotel, in Thurles, county Tipperary, to found the GAA.

They did this because they had a particular insight and vision: that other young Irishmen, just like themselves, should be weaned away from the games of the British Empire and encouraged to play Irish games, under Irish rules, administered by Irishmen. The idea was, that if they played their own games, it would be a step towards ensuring they would eventually work their way out of the political clutches of Empire.

When we look at the Croke Park today – and not just Croker, but so many other GAA stadiums as well – when we see the strength of the Association in so many parts of the island, we know that Cusack, Davin, Bracken and the rest of them succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Of course, they were not alone in that effort. Dúbhghlás de hide founded the Gaelic League in 1893, then in 1898, Connolly used the Centenary of the 1798 Rising to raise political consciousness, Yeats and Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre in 1904, Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin in 1906, Larkin the Transport Union in 1909.

There were other milestones on the march to the freedom we enjoy today – 1916 and the Rising, the Treaty of 1921, the Constitution of 1937 and the Republic of Ireland Act in 1948. North of the border, we had Sunningdale in 1973, Hillsborough in 1985, Downing Street in 1994, the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the IRA ceasefire and decommissioning and, finally, Sinn Féin’s recognition of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. In the prophetic words of Michael Collins, all ‘stepping stones’ on the way to freedom and independence.

We mention all these political developments in Anglo-Irish and North / South relations to counter what seemed to be the central argument of those people opposed to England’s presence in Croke Park and the playing of God Save the Queen’. Their argument is that until relations between England and Ireland are ‘normal’ – that is, until there is a total British military and constitutional withdrawal from the North – their teams, anthems and flags are not welcome, and certainly not in Croke Park, the site of the Bloody Sunday atrocity of November 1920.

But in politics and international relations, as much as in sport, when can you say that everything is ‘normal’? Politics is all about making judgment calls. There is no black-and-white (or you might even say, no green-and-orange) in politics. Only grey. That’s why the judgment calls to be made or often so difficult as well as so interesting. On the team, the flag, the anthem in Croke Park the real judgment is not whether our relations with the other island are ‘normal’. But, rather, are they normal enough?

The answer has to be an unequivocal ‘Yes’. When Dis Great Assooosheeayshun Of Ours rented out Croke Park to the IRFU for international matches they knew that ’God Save the Queen' would be played. By allowing it to be played, and honoured on Saturday, not just the GAA, not just the 83,000 spectators, but also the vast majority of people on this island showed strength rather than weakness. They showed independence and maturity.

After all, England came to Croke Park on Saturday on our terms, not theirs. And we beat them. That, surely, is the essence of freedom.

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Linked 'Vote On It!' poll:
The GAA have "no problem" with the bands playing "God Save the Queen" on Saturday. Do you have a problem with it?