In a loyalist enclave of Portadown a group of young men cheer as they watch a Premier League football match on their friend\u2019s phone.<\/p>\n
It is lunchtime on Saturday and a high court challenge against a decision to ban an Orange Order<\/a> march down the nationalist Garvaghy Road is due to begin 30 miles away in Belfast<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of the men is from a Protestant background and says he is \u201crelieved\u201d that the two-week standoff has ended.<\/p>\n \u201cLet them live in peace. Give it up. There was no need for a march,\u201d says the man, who does not wish to be named.<\/p>\n They are standing on a street in the Brownstown area of the Co Armagh<\/a> town, a short distance from the loyalist Corcrain and Edgarstown housing estates.<\/p>\n Murals of the Portadown True Blues flute band and Mid Ulster UVF<\/a> are painted on gable ends in Edgarstown.<\/p>\n Paramilitary flags fly above them.<\/p>\n Pointing to his six friends, the man says three of them are Catholic.<\/p>\n Leeds United have just scored a goal against Arsenal and they are celebrating on the street.<\/p>\n There is no talk of Northern Secretary Chris Bryant<\/a>\u2019s intervention the previous evening that led to the Orange Order march from Drumcree<\/a> Church being halted \u201cin the best interests of peace\u201d.<\/p>\n Instead, the group is looking forward to travelling to Belfast for the evening to celebrate a friend\u2019s birthday (a Leeds fan).<\/p>\n They work together in a pharmaceutical company in the town.<\/p>\n Bosses banned the Drumcree dispute being discussed in the workplace from \u201cday one\u201d, says the man.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people from my background aren\u2019t happy and have a different opinion to me,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re all friends. We all think the same thing, there was no need for it.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth sides don\u2019t want it.\u201d<\/p>\n Another friend from the Garvaghy Road joins him.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as the parade got the go-ahead, everyone was talking about it. There have been a few heated conversations in work.<\/p>\n \u201cWe speak it among ourselves but it\u2019s only banter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all in our late 20s and knew there was no point in going back to dark days, especially when there\u2019s been peace.\u201d<\/p>\n Orangemen gathered outside Drumcree Church on Saturday ahead of the legal challenge, which has been adjourned until Monday.<\/p>\n One man stationed outside the church refuses to discuss the fallout following Bryant\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Orange Order legal challenge to Garvaghy Road parade ban adjourned to MondayOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Overnight the order issued a statement expressing its \u201cprofound disappointment\u201d and said it was seeking urgent meetings with the Northern Secretary and PSNI<\/a> chief constable Jon Boutcher<\/a>.<\/p>\n Blue and Orange flags in support of the Orangemen \u2013 emblazoned with \u201cHere we stand and we can do no other\u201d \u2013 fly outside some homes in the loyalist housing estates.<\/p>\n A resident, who has one of the flags hanging from an upstairs window, is unwilling to give his reaction to developments over the past 24 hours.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t trust Irish newspapers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A woman in her 20s who grew up in the loyalist stronghold says she was \u201chappy\u201d when she heard the news on Friday night.<\/p>\n She adds she is too frightened to speak publicly.<\/p>\n \u201cMy family wanted the parade at the start but then they got sick of the circus around it. They felt it was dragging on for too long and causing too much tension,\u201d says the woman.<\/p>\n On the Garvaghy Road the last of the tents which filled the road during the standoff are being dismantled.<\/p>\n Only one gazebo remains standing by midafternoon.<\/p>\n Much like Brownstown and Edgarstown, nationalist residents are reluctant to go on record.<\/p>\n \u201cWe work with people from the other side and we don\u2019t want any tension,\u201d says a man packing away crates of bottled water.<\/p>\n A concert was due to be held on the Garvaghy Road on Sunday but has been cancelled.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s over. We\u2019re relieved someone saw sense \u2013 but there\u2019s to be no triumphalism,\u201d says the man.<\/p>\n He admits he is worried about the impact of the standoff on his three children.<\/p>\n A Facebook post has appeared overnight warning parents from a Protestant background not to let their children \u201cmix with those from Catholic schools\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wee lad\u2019s school is beside a Protestant school. There\u2019s probably only one person that owns that unionist [Facebook] page but that\u2019s the level of hatred,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would be wary about going into town. If you went into a bar, you\u2019d be on edge now.\u201d<\/p>\n Some older residents are more optimistic for the next generation.<\/p>\n There has been no violence throughout the dispute, one pensioner remarks.<\/p>\n Sectarian tensions during the Drumcree standoff in the 1990s were linked to 21 murders.<\/p>\n The loyalist community \u201chas been told to obey the law, which it\u2019s done the whole way through,\u201d says the pensioner, who lives on the Brownstown Road.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this town now, the amount of hardline loyalists is basically nil. All the old hands are gone,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n \u201cI honestly don\u2019t think the younger generation is interested. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a Protestant in my late 60s living in a loyalist area and I don\u2019t believe there\u2019ll ever be the trouble that we saw about here 30 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that ship has sailed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a loyalist enclave of Portadown a group of young men cheer as they watch a Premier League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[48512,4501,321,73902,270806,93,61,60,140069,2443,18254,21754],"class_list":["post-651312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-armagh","tag-belfast","tag-celebrities","tag-chris-bryant","tag-drumcree","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jon-boutcher","tag-northern-ireland","tag-orange-order","tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}