A Noble Cause for Sports

While the writing in this article isn't my favorite, the story is one of seeming impossible success, and certainly makes anyone who doubted the power of sports to change the world waver a little bit from their position.

The story of these two Northern Irish men, one Catholic and one Protestant, to forge something above those distinctions bears lessons that probably belong on a grander stage than ESPN the Magazine or the ESPY awards last weekend where Dave Cullen and Trevor Ringland were co-recipients of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2007 ESPYS. Tom Friend at ESPN the magazine should be applauded for being able to put together the pieces of the story. So I'll do my little part and put a bit of the story on here with a link to the full story at the bottom.

ESPN The Magazine: Hate is a waste of time
By Tom Friend
ESPN The Magazine
(Archive)


Editor's note: This article appears in the July 16 issue of ESPN The Magazine.


Across the ocean, in a bigoted Irish town, little girls ask other little girls, "Coke or Pepsi?" It is a veiled, mean question -- because the wrong answer can get a little girl's home firebombed. This is a story about the right answer: a basketball game. A game arranged, in part, by one man who's a Coke and one man who's a Pepsi …

* * * *

His first memory in life is a funeral.

He can still see the stone facade of the church, the wood seats and the casket that held his father, his "da." It was no place for a 5-year-old boy; then again, Belfast in the mid-1970s was one corpse and one restless night after another.

He remembers, after his da's death, the police and the British army repeatedly storming his home after dark, yanking his mum out of bed and tossing her to the ground, manhandling him and his two screaming brothers. The strange men would rip up floorboards and drywall in a vain search for stashed ammunition. They never did find any, but from what he's been told, they once returned 40 times in 30 days. It drove his mum to drink, and she became a staggering alcoholic whom he had to follow up the stairs, in case she tumbled backward.

Months later, his mum moved the family to the Ormeau Road section of town, near her mother but also near the epicenter of the Catholic-Protestant "Troubles" of Northern Ireland. Men were butchered just beyond his front stoop -- over religion, land, politics -- and when he got older, he wanted answers. He wanted to know why his da was gone, why his mum never visited her husband's grave. When no one came clean, he eavesdropped. He heard his mum tell a relative that his da had been a member of the IRA and heard her tell a neighbor that he'd been shot. All sorts of questions raced through the boy's head. Shot by whom? Protestants? Had his da shot people too?

As a teenager, he roamed the area around the Ormeau Road with his most rugged Catholic friends, looking for Protestants to pay back. He knew a Protestant when he met one. If a man's name was William, Tom or Oliver, he was Protestant. If he was a Sean, Liam, Paddy or Seamus, he was Catholic. If he rooted for the Rangers football team, he was Protestant; if he rooted for Celtic, he was Catholic. If he played rugby or cricket, Protestant; hurling or Gaelic football, Catholic. If he went to a school called Holy Cross, definitely Catholic. The giveaways were numerous.

This was the world he lived in, where bigoted Catholics called Protestants "Prods," and bigoted Protestants called Catholics "Fenians." But it was also a world in which he could almost hide. His name was Dave -- Dave Cullen -- which didn't peg him to either religion, although he was Catholic. And his sport was basketball, a game considered neutral in Ireland, if it was considered at all.

Outdoor courts were scarce, so young Dave had to walk alone past dangerous Protestant neighborhoods to find a gym where he could shoot baskets, a gym he'd have to pay two quid to enter. He accepted the risk because he needed the escape. He was still haunted by his da's death, still furious at the army and the predominantly Protestant police force that had driven his mum to the bottle. He knew he was a bitter, prejudiced young man. But there was something about basketball, something about draining a shot from well beyond the arc, something that gave him peace.

Hate is a Waste of Time