{"id":658218,"date":"2026-10-18T07:18:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T07:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/658218\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T07:18:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T07:18:24","slug":"ive-never-met-bobby-sands-the-hunger-striker-the-belfast-football-team-that-put-politics-to-one-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/658218\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I’ve never met Bobby Sands the hunger striker’: The Belfast football team that put politics to one side"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Declan Bogue<\/p>\n

THERE WERE NO lofty ideals at play when the Northern Ireland Housing Trust started construction on the Rathcoole estate in north Belfast in the early 1950s.<\/p>\n

Part of a post-war building boom, the 366 acres on the slopes of Carnmoney Hill would serve as modern housing for those stuck in deprivation in the inner city areas, allowing the city to be spruced up.<\/p>\n

If there was an ambition for the area to be cross-community, nobody was shouting about it, but around one-third of the families moving into Rathcoole were Catholic, populating the local Stella Maris schools.<\/p>\n

A local doctor and youth leader, Liam Conlon, had already founded Star of the Sea youth club, the history of which still lives on in Super League basketball club Belfast Star. In the \u201860s, Conlon gathered an underage team of whoever wished to play soccer. The rule was there was to be no talk of politics and religion.<\/p>\n

They played together, they won together. Recollections from those who coached them testify that across five years, they weren\u2019t beaten once on their way to winning multiple competitions.<\/p>\n

Players were invited to cross-channel trials. Almost half of them played at some level for Northern Ireland at youth level.<\/p>\n

\"Star
\n The Star of the Sea team with Raymond McCord, back row, third from right. Bobby Sands is straight in front of him.\n<\/p>\n

The story has inspired recurring journalism features as well as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. On Tuesday, it is brought to life once again in a new TG4 documentary by debutant director James Wynne: \u2018R\u00e9alt na Mara \u2013 An Pheil, Na Triobl\u00f3id\u00ed agus An Iarmhairt\u2019 (Star of the Sea \u2013 The Football, The Troubles and the Aftermath).\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be much of a story without a chilling and deathly twist.<\/p>\n

As the grim \u201870s hovered into view, things changed. Catholic families were being burned out of their Rathcoole homes. Their places were being taken by Protestants with sectarian tendencies.<\/p>\n

Within a matter of several years, players had gone to the extreme edges.<\/p>\n

Star of the Sea\u2019s left-back, Bobby Sands, helped plant and detonate an IRA bomb that took out the Balmoral Furniture showroom.<\/p>\n

\"may-05-1981-bobby-sands-dies-the-ira-hunger-striker-bobby-sands-died-early-today-on-the-66th-day-of-his-fast-the-news-was-flashed-from-the-maze-prison-stating-that-the-rebel-mp-had-died-at-precis\"<\/p>\n

Their right-back, Michael Acheson, joined the Ulster Volunteer Force. So too did midfielder Terry Nicholl.<\/p>\n

Denis Sweeney narrowly avoided being in a pub bombing, which influenced his decision to become a doctor. Tommy O\u2019Neill was displaced by pogroms and died a young man, severely affected by the surrounding environment.<\/p>\n

Sands would achieve worldwide renown, scorn, admiration and pity as the first of the 10 Republican prisoners to die on hunger strike in 1981 in Long Kesh prison.<\/p>\n

During his fast, he was elected as member of parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The head of Her Majesty\u2019s government, Margaret Thatcher, was unimpressed and would not concede ground on the prisoner\u2019s demands for political status.<\/p>\n

In the early hours of 5 May 1981, Sands lost his life and crossed the threshold into another trembling world.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The pick of that Star of the Sea team was Raymond McCord.<\/p>\n

The son of Hector, an Orange man, and mother Kathleen from the Shankill, Raymond and older sister Jean moved out from York Street to Rathcoole just before he started primary school.<\/p>\n

The street he lived in was mixed, and as he said, \u2018the happiest\u2019 street in all the estate. His neighbours were Monaghans, Fitzsimmons, Binghams and Reillys.<\/p>\n

McCord lived a couple of doors down from Geraldine Noade, who would later marry Sands.<\/p>\n

He started playing for Star of the Sea and soon found he loved everything about the team and the culture of the club, with Conlon their coach and youth leader.<\/p>\n

His father never tried to talk him into the Orange Order, but he remembers some of the elders trying. The closest he came was being a \u2018string boy\u2019, holding the ends of strings flying off a banner on the Twelfth. His suit was bought \u2018on tick\u2019 and his shoes were too big for him and cut his feet to ribbons.<\/p>\n

The bonfires at that time were harmless affairs; a few bushes cut down and set alight. No pallets, no tyres, certainly no tricolours or effigies of mosques or immigrants on small boats. Two families \u2013 one Catholic, one Protestant \u2013 would collect a few shillings off the families on the row that would pay for the children\u2019s lemonade and sweets.<\/p>\n

\"R\u00e9alt
\n Raymond McCord.\n<\/p>\n

Still, McCord could find nothing about it that really appealed to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played football like everybody,\u201d he recalls now in his living room in north Belfast. \u201cI went to school, I played football and I had a girlfriend at that time. Why would I want to join something that\u2019s going to take you away from that?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was more than good. Manchester United came calling and he went over for two months. His coach was Paddy Crerand. The manager was Frank O\u2019Farrell. George Best was still there, training on an adjoining pitch at The Cliff.<\/p>\n

And then, just like Best, he decided he was homesick and went home.<\/p>\n

Unlike Best, he didn\u2019t go back.<\/p>\n

His boyhood club Crusaders wanted him. He went along and had a look. But again, not for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happier at home: my girlfriend, my family there, my friends, at The Star,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Attitudes were hardening. He was asked what he was doing playing for Star of the Sea. They were, after all, a \u2018Fenian\u2019 crowd.<\/p>\n

And when the football was over, he would be asked in the pubs about Man United, always couched in terms that surely it was the greatest mistake of his life?<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, wait a minute. If I had stayed, I\u2019d have ended up probably married to an English girl. Chances are I wouldn\u2019t have the three great sons I have.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my three sons are better than Manchester United, Barcelona, Liverpool, anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t regret anything whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One of his sons was Raymond Jr. His picture in Royal Air Force uniform hangs on the wall, directly in Raymond\u2019s line of view.<\/p>\n

\"raymond-mccord-junior-in-his-raf-uniform-c27aa700-9eee-4ceb-aa68-95805c399f51-296x227\"
\n Raymond McCord Jr.\n<\/p>\n

The elder McCord had no truck with loyalist paramilitaries. When he was a teenager, he was asked to join some of the local \u2018Tartan Gangs\u2019, a bit of teenage scrapping that proved a recruiting ground for the Ulster Defence Association and the UVF. He refused.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, they hit a Catholic friend of his one time, so he exacted revenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t being John Wayne. That\u2019s what friends do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t know until you\u2019re fighting them if they could fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my experience of them, they were easy to beat, because they couldn\u2019t fight. They were thugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He worked as a welder in the famous shipyards of Harland and Wolff. Huge sheets of metal were suspended by the famous cranes, tied together by bolts, and his job was to lather on as much weld on the inside seam as he could \u2013 nobody was concerned about the appearance on the inside of an oil tanker.<\/p>\n

He liked the work and he played football for the company team, but he wasn\u2019t crazy about the overall atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shipyard was full of paramilitaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had my job. Over the years, (I\u2019d have) a few arguments in the shipyard, you know, over certain things, with paramilitary ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, I didn\u2019t see them as paramilitary. I see them as an individual who could try and cause me a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Occasionally, he would find himself in fights with them. He had absolutely no fear.<\/p>\n

One night, someone followed him into the toilets of a bar and launched a headbutt at him, breaking his nose. McCord hit back severely.<\/p>\n

He went back to his company in the pub and carried on his night. The barman told him to slip outside the side door and get home. He wouldn\u2019t. Half an hour later, car tyres squealed outside and a group of men emerged in the pub with iron bars and baseball bats.<\/p>\n

Once they had him down, they went to work, breaking his arms and legs. Nobody could help. They were told not to even call for an ambulance as he was left for dead.<\/p>\n

But paramilitaries offer some status and money. Not everyone was immune from their appeal and gradually, Raymond Jr found himself drawn into that world during his periods of leave from the RAF.<\/p>\n

In 1997, a drug deal went wrong and Raymond Jr\u2019s leaders suspected he might have informed in police interviews. He was lured to the disused Ballyduff quarry where he was beaten to death with concrete blocks on 9 November 1997. When Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte raised Raymond Jr\u2019s case in D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann in 2005, using his parliamentary privilege, he said that Raymond Jr had been murdered on the orders of Mark Haddock, the head of the UVF\u2019s Mount Vernon branch.<\/p>\n

\"R\u00e9alt
\n Raymond at the Mount Vernon estate.\n<\/p>\n

Raymond Sr was made swear to his family that he would not seek physical retribution.<\/p>\n

Instead, he put faith in the police investigation. But it went nowhere for years, and he wasn\u2019t being updated. He made some enquiries himself and spoke to leading figures in loyalist gangs and began forming suspicions.<\/p>\n

He took them to the office of Northern Ireland\u2019s Police Ombudsman, Nuala O\u2019Loan. In January 2007, O\u2019Loan\u2019s report confirmed that Haddock \u2013 identified in the report as Informant #1 \u2013 had indeed been a protected species and safe from arrest; he was a British state agent, a paid informer.<\/p>\n

Raymond Sr is a tough man, but how he and his family were treated comes out in torrents.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cNo church minister condemned Raymond\u2019s murder. No church minister came near my wife\u2019s house. Not one brought even a sympathy card.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot one even came to speak to us or say a prayer. This is no joke, not one to this day, not one has ever come here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to ask the stupid question why? Is it because of fear of paramilitaries? I know there was nothing in it for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur own so-called Unionist politicians, (Ian) Paisley, David Trimble and them, not one came near the house. Not one attended the funeral.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have no love for those people. Those church men that are supposed to help families whether they like them or don\u2019t like them, supposed to come and give them some type of support.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cWhat they should have done is taken their dog collars off and thrown them in the bin. They\u2019re only Christians when it suits them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only one unionist politician, the Democratic Unionist Party\u2019s Jim Shannon, has raised the case in parliament, and retains contact with McCord.<\/p>\n

McCord himself has asked DUP leader Gavin Robinson to back his calls for a public enquiry into Raymond junior\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said the DUP don\u2019t support inquiries.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe talks about the soldiers, the veterans, giving them special protection. All I want is him to support an enquiry for my son. All I want is for him to ask in parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RAYMOND
\n Raymond McCord at the grave of his son.\n<\/p>\n

What frustrates McCord gravely is how Protestant paramilitaries are still operating in racketeering, fraud, drug dealing, prostitution and many other areas.<\/p>\n

And the response from American and British governments is to continue to pump millions into the attempt to \u2018transition\u2019 when nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people still have a jackboot on top of their own community\u2019s head, still raking money in for drugs and extortion, but our ministers stay silent, right?\u201d says McCord.<\/p>\n

\u201cArlene Foster \u2013 who I have no time for \u2013 said in 2018 that we\u2019re 20 years from the Good Friday Agreement and loyalists, paramilitaries, had to make a choice, and had hit a fork in the road. This is eight years later and they\u2019re still talking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said before, I\u2019ve said in Dublin to Dublin politicians who are on the Good Friday Agreement committee, I\u2019ve appeared in front of them several times. Don\u2019t give them anything. Stop the money. Stop all their money.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t be entitled to it. Since they went on ceasefire in 1994, the UVF has murdered 32 Protestants since their ceasefire.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s coming up to 29 years since Raymond McCord Jr was murdered. Nobody from the ministries nor unionism has been to see him or the family. If politicians approach the door of his two other sons, they are immediately dismissed.<\/p>\n

The death threats to Raymond Sr continue. Raymond Jr\u2019s headstone has been smashed three times.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

His mood flips when he goes back into reminiscing about Star of the Sea. Next week there will be a screening of the documentary at the Odeon Theatres in Belfast. He is compiling a list of old friends who have asked to have tickets reserved.<\/p>\n

Across the way, two sets of Polish neighbours have asked him about it and have booked their tickets. He and some others are trying to track down the remaining members of the team who didn\u2019t take part in the documentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cDessie (Black) in goals\u2026 Geordie Hussey could have played in English league football. And I mean that, Geordie was good, fast and strong, and a good lad.<\/p>\n

\u201cTommy O\u2019Neill, forward, had nice skill. Terry Nicholl, Terry was one of the underrated ones. Terry had some skill. Terry should have been at least, a real, one of the top players in Irish league football.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Terry went to jail. When he got out, he wanted to explore more of his Mormon faith and join family in Salt Lake City, Utah, but his conviction meant there was no chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig Paddy (Davidson). What a full-back. Fastest footballer I\u2019ve ever seen in my life. Paddy didn\u2019t get the credit\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBobby Sands\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He takes a moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I remember doing an interview and people said, \u2018What about Bobby Sands? The hunger striker?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve never met Bobby Sands the hunger striker in my life. Because when he left for Twinbrook, I have never seen him again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis wife lived about eight doors from me. We walked together on the same street.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t skilful, but Sandsy played for the shirt. He wasn\u2019t one of the tough guys on the team but let people know he was there. Just because he was going in hard didn\u2019t make him some sort of street fighter or, you know, hard man.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues on.<\/p>\n

\u201cDenis Sweeney, fantastic player too. Willie Caldwell: the scouts were after Willie, Willie was the George Best of the team. He was running the ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerry Nicholl, Michael Acheson\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He comes back to Sands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWillie says he (Sands) had the courage of his convictions. Willie is a Protestant guy.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I would disagree. I believe Sandsy was used because I said the Bobby Sands I knew, the Terry Nicholl I knew, and the Michael Acheson I knew\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say he made his own choice, I think he got to this stage it was too late to change because he was going to die.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he made a choice the same way I made a choice when my son was murdered: I\u2019m not stopping, I\u2019ll get the people, get justice for my son.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that the only time a man\u2019s gonna die, it\u2019s for his family, to stop people killing his family, get in the way of it, defend them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause nobody wants to die. Unfortunately, people take their own lives, mental illness and things like that, depression. This is completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues. \u201cDo I regret that he died? Certainly, certainly regret he died there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew his wife. Grew up in the same street as me. A good girl. Good woman from a good family. When he was put in jail, I ran into Geraldine and I said, \u2018How\u2019s Sandsy?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he got out after that. People can turn around and criticise and speak of him who don\u2019t know him, and they say because he\u2019s only out of jail and he goes back in again, that he didn\u2019t learn his lesson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to judge him at all because I don\u2019t know what was in his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I can say is the Bobby Sands that died on hunger strike, Bobby Sands who joined the IRA, wasn\u2019t the Bobby Sands that I knew at football, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

He turns his attention to Nicholl and Acheson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to bring Terry and Michael into it, of course, and in the same way I\u2019ve never seen badness in Terry, I have never seen it in Michael.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke to Michael after he got out of jail a few times. Private conversations, and we\u2019re good. The friendship was still there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Bobby Sands had to come out of jail and we had run into each other in Belfast and we spoke, I\u2019d ask, \u2018Why did you join the IRA?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d have no doubt we would have a couple of pints, and I mean that. I don\u2019t care what people in my community say about it. I don\u2019t care what their opinion is.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we wouldn\u2019t have had much of a conversation about that. Because then you talk about the ordinary things in life, what we\u2019ve done when we played football, and that\u2019s what people need to do now, you know where I\u2019m coming from, you know?<\/p>\n

\"may-05-1981-the-funeral-of-bobby-sands-pawn-of-the-ira-a-bewildered-seven-year-old-gerald-sands-attending-the-stage-managed-funeral-of-the-father-he-never-knew-he-has-been-brought-over-to-belfas\"
\n Gerald Sands at his father Bobby’s funeral. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n

Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never ran into his family since Bobby died. I know he has a son and I hear from others that his son is a nice lad. People I know speak well of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, I\u2019d love to meet him. If he wanted to know something of his father, I could tell him what he was like when we were 16, 17.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Today, Raymond McCord is immensely proud of the job that director James Wynne has done on this documentary. He is intrigued about what other people think of it.<\/p>\n

He would tell more people about it but he knows the reaction he\u2019d get when he tells them it is being screened on TG4, and that a good deal of it is narrated as Gaeilge.<\/p>\n

He feels the documentary needs to be studied on a deeper level: about the innocence of children and how children who are mixed through each other don\u2019t know the differences, if indeed there are any.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t professors. We weren\u2019t human rights activists. We were 16-year-old footballers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, he becomes a central focus of the documentary, but he feels the greatest contributions came from Denis Sweeney, Geordie Hussey and others.<\/p>\n

Sweeney said it took him years before he realised that the team was made of different religions.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeordie says playing for Star helped to make him into the person he is today,\u201d adds McCord.<\/p>\n

\u201cA young lad, with strong Unionist convictions. He\u2019s not afraid to tell the truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

R\u00e9alt na Mara \u2013 An Pheil, Na Triobl\u00f3id\u00ed agus An Iarmhairt (Star of the Sea \u2013 The Football, The Troubles and the Aftermath) will screen on Tuesday 20 October at 9.30pm on TG4. <\/p>\n

Written by Declan Bogue and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won\u2019t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women\u2019s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Declan Bogue THERE WERE NO lofty ideals at play when the Northern Ireland Housing Trust started construction on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1050,61,60,278535,3405,112,278536],"class_list":["post-658218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-documentary","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-raymond-mccord","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-star-of-the-sea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658218","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=658218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}