Cliftonville FC is Ireland’s oldest football club. It was formed by John McAlery, the treasurer
of the cricket club of the same name, who wrote article in the September 20th 1879 edition
of the Belfast News Letter asking for ‘gentlemen desirous of becoming members’ to turn up
for a practice session the following day. Those who did played against a team of rugby
players by the name of Quidnuncs a week later, in the first match between two Irish sides.
Resisting the professionalism embraced by other Irish League clubs in the last decade
of the 1800s, Cliftonville defiantly retained their
amateur status until 1970 when, having finished bottom of the Irish League for eleven consecutive
seasons, they finally decided to become a semi-professional outfit and pay their players.
1970 was also the last time Cliftonville would play their cross-city rivals Linfield at their
home ground of Solitude for nearly three decades.
The Troubles which lit up Belfast and beyond throughout this era were well underway, and
when there was trouble at Linfield’s Irish Cup
Final versus Ballymena United - hosted at Cliftonville’s Solitude ground - the Royal
Ulster Constabulary decided fixtures involving Linfield
- Ireland’s foremost Protestant club - could no longer take place there. Though Cliftonville
had not been competing that day, there had been skirmishes between local Catholics and
fans of the team from Windsor Park. The population of the area around Solitude
had largely been comprised of Protestants and
Unionists, but as Catholics and Irish Nationalists became displaced from other parts of
Belfast as the Troubles progressed, many moved to locations around the lower Cliftonville
Road. This meant that by the end of the decade, Cliftonville FC’s fanbase had become
almost entirely Catholic. By the end of the 1970s a hardcore of Cliftonville’s
supporters, the ‘Red Army’, frequently clashed with fans of rival clubs traditionally
associated with political Unionism. In the Irish
Cup Final of 1979, Cliftonville and Linfield fans engaged in fistfights on the Windsor
Park pitch before the game had even kicked off
before Cliftonville won the trophy for the first time
in seventy years. Early in the following season Cliftonville
played their north Belfast rivals Crusaders at their
opponents Seaview ground and the Royal Ulster Constabulary saw fit to put 1,000 officers
on duty. That was three times more than had been on duty at Ibrox the previous Saturday
when Rangers had played Celtic, ten times as many as when Arsenal played Manchester
United that same day and a staggering fifteen times more than at Liverpool’s first fixture
of the new season at Anfield, when they played
West Bromwich Albion. Sixteen years later, their troubles still
lingered. In October 1996 a match between Portadown
and Cliftonville was abandoned when supporters of the travelling team and the buses they
had arrived on were attacked by a mob throwing stones and brandishing placards
emblazoned with the words ‘No Republican Scum in Mid Ulster’. Cliftonville’s fans
were prevented from entering Portadown’s Shamrock
Park by the Ulster Volunteer Force, and when the players realised what had happened
they refused to appear for the second half. One Cliftonville supporter declared that much
as he loved his team it was ‘only a matter of
time before somebody is killed and no football match is worth that.’
When it was suggested earlier that year by the chairman of a rival club that Cliftonville
should withdraw from the Irish League a Cliftonville board member, Stephen McKillop, had
remarked ‘We’re the oldest club in Ireland, we were founder members of the Irish Football
Association, our ground is the oldest in the Irish League. We were playing before the rest
of them, ****ing sure we’re not going to be
the ones to leave.’ ​ Yet there was hope that change was on the
way. On April 10th 1998 the Good Friday Agreement saw the culmination of a series
of paramilitary ceasefires and intense negotiations between Northern Irish politicians
and the British and Irish governments, resulting in a new system of government in
the region. On the pitch, Northern Irish football’s own ‘Good Saturday’ moment came about
later that year on the 21st of November. Linfield were finally permitted to play at
Solitude again after a twenty nine year absence. The
match kicked off at 11am and the attendance was capped at 1,500, of which only 500 could
be away fans. In the event, only 325 Linfield supporters made the trip across the city,
and every single junction along their route was
sealed. When they arrived at Solitude, they were
welcomed by Cliftonville fans congregated at the Waterworks end of the ground holding
up a banner declaring ‘Céad Míle Fáilte Linfield’
in Gaelic, and another echoing the same sentiment in English: ‘A Hundred Thousand
Welcomes LINFIELD’.