IN 1969, Francie McCloskey, a well-liked 66-year-old farmer, was batoned to death by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the door-front of Hassan’s draper’s shop on Dungiven Main Street.

The joke told about suits from Hassan’s was that the trousers were so flared you had to take two strides before the trousers moved, but they famously lasted forever, made from thick material that, as Packie Kealey put it, “a nail couldn’t pierce.”

A bachelor, Francie had come into town that morning to buy his weekly groceries, get a hair-cut in Doran’s, have a glass of stout in McReynolds’ Bar and shoot the breeze with the boys. The old man was minding his own business and they killed him anyway. No point calling the police when the police are doing the killing.

Francie was the first fatality of what came to be known across the world as ‘The Troubles’. His wanton murder changed everything. It was covered up by the state. No one was even arrested. After that, the Catholic people knew where their loyalties lay. I heard the adults talking about it and even if I didn’t understand, I felt glad that I was on the good team.

There is a persistent myth that the Troubles was very damaging to the GAA community in the North. Although it is accurate to say that members were harassed and imprisoned and sometimes murdered, the opposite is the truth.

The Troubles created a ‘them and us’ mentality. We were forced to rely on ourselves and trust no one. The GAA was our identity, part of a ‘fuck you’ to the rotten state we lived in. The result was that the games flourished and our expression of them was ferocious and fanatical.

The other point to remember is that human beings quickly adjust to a new reality, whether it is fighting in trenches for years or being imprisoned or being diagnosed with terminal illness. Tougher than rats, we fight on and make the best of it. What was happening to us during the Troubles was happening to everyone else and being in it together meant it was no big deal. It was just the way things were and no point in making a fuss.

One Saturday night in the ’70s, there was a big night in the club after the first day of our annual senior hurling tournament. Freshford from Kilkenny, Kinnity of Offaly, Moneygall of Tipperary and Dungiven were the teams. Eddie Keher and Brian Cody and many other household names had travelled for the weekend and were being put up in local people’s houses. Eddie Keher stayed in ours.

Anyway, my ma and da were singing flat out on the stage when a huge explosion rocked the walls and showered dust on the audience. Our southern visitors threw themselves on the floor and my father sent one of the Hassons out to check. The Provos had blown up the Ministry of Agriculture offices at the head of the town. The scout caem back in, shouted up to the stage “It’s only the Ministry of Agriculture, Francie” and to the shock of the visitors, the music resumed and all returned to normal.

If you take that fateful July day in Dungiven in 1969 as the starting point, the evidence is overwhelming. Wind forward 20 odd years and the children of the Troubles were poised to dominate the game.

In 1991, Lavey became All-Ireland Club football champions, walloping Salthill in the final. Six months later, Down – having beaten us in a titanic two-game series in Ulster – became All-Ireland senior football champions. Derry in 1993, followed by Down again in 1994, established the supremacy of the six counties. Tyrone were beaten by a point in the 1995 final, but this should not have happened as Peter Canavan most certainly did not pick the ball off the ground in the lead up to the equaliser.

Dublin, a team of chokers who had quit against Donegal (1992), Derry (1993, having been five up at half-time), and Down (1994) were choking again and had that equaliser stood, Tyrone would almost certainly have gone on to win that championship, a championship that created one of my favourite jokes: What is the difference between Peter Canavan and a black taxi? A black taxi only carries seven.

Those six county All-Ireland champions created a bridge for the Armagh-Tyrone axis that dominated the 2000s, crushing Dublin and cracking Kerry, Kerry’s sole consolation coming in 2006 when Kieran Donaghy almost single-handedly defeated Armagh. Again, those boys were all children of the Troubles, born into a fanatical six county GAA culture. Club football in the North underlines the point. In 1972, Bellaghy won the All-Ireland Club title. It was not until 1986 that another six county team won again, Burren of Down. When Lavey destroyed all-comers in 1990/91, it was the beginning of another ‘Troubles surge’. Nine All-Ireland Club titles followed in the next 20 years, with Crossmaglen, St Gall’s of West Belfast, and Ballinderry triumphant. My own club Dungiven threw away an All-Ireland in 1998.

Again, this dominance created a bridge for the likes of Slaughtneil and others. A crucial part of this was that sense of ‘ourselves alone’, a sense that we were doing this for the greater good. That the British could throw whatever they liked at us but it would make no difference. This is not to be confused with another myth, peddled by some unionist politicians including Peter Robinson and Gregory Campbell, that the GAA was “ the IRA at play.” The IRA had nothing to do with it. It was about a community expressing itself, a community driven together by external forces and one that was not going to be suppressed. The GAA was our language.

By any objective standard, we were of course treated appallingly by the state. Young people nowadays would not believe the sort of things that went on. In August 1971, Operation Demetrius was put into action by the British government. Their army, who was used to doing what it liked in colonies all over the world and getting away with it, began taking Catholic men away without charge and detaining them in a camp outside Belfast. 342 lads were lifted in that first swoop.

My own father was taken. We were thrown out of our beds and knocked about. He was dragged out of the house by soldiers as my mother screamed and tried to drag him back. Suddenly he was gone. We were told nothing. We did not know where he was. Later we found out he was at a place called Long Kesh. We didn’t see him again – apart from the odd visit – for three years. The next-door neighbour (who had a phone), came to the house and said “Ann, you have to go and pick up Francie.”

In all, almost 2,000 of our men were interned. Of course, as the Americans found out in Vietnam and as the British eventually discovered in every country in the world they plundered and degraded, you cannot beat the people. In Long Kesh, the detainees quickly organised their own Ulster Football Championship, with Derry winning the inaugural Long Kesh Cup, a certain Francis Richard Gerard Brolly togging out at centre half-back for the victors. Like me 20 years later, he was on the good team.

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