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You don’t need a doctorate in international relations to know Ireland and Northern Ireland don’t exactly have the coziest relationship. Now, those tensions have forced Notre Dame to issue an awkward—and fairly hypocritical—warning to fans planning to attend the men’s hockey team’s games in Belfast later this month.
Neither Ireland nor Northern Ireland is known for being a major hotbed for hockey, but Belfast made some strides on that front when four college teams were invited to participate in the inaugural “Friendship Four” tournament that was held in the capital city of the British country in 2015.
2024 marks the seventh edition of an event that will feature the men’s hockey teams from Merrimack, Harvard, Boston University, and Notre Dame facing off in a battle for the Belpot Trophy during the two-day affair that will kick off at SSE Arena on November 29th.
This marks the first year the Fighting Irish will be participating in the Friendship Four, and the school is going out of its way to ensure its supporters don’t inadvertently draw the ire of the locals over a geopolitical strife that stretches back for centuries.
On Tuesday, Notre Dame Hockey posted a graphic online advising fans to avoid wearing green clothing as well as apparel featuring shamrocks, leprechauns, the Irish flag, and even the words “Fighting Irish” in a now-deleted post that lives on thanks to the nature of the internet.
Notre Dame Hockey
Why? Well, if you’re somehow not familiar with the situation I’ve alluded to, here’s a quick (and very elementary) primer.
The Emerald Isle was one of the many countries that fell victim to British imperialism after Scottish and English settlers began to arrive in the 1600s. That development triggered a string of conflicts largely rooted in tensions between Ireland’s Catholic population and the Protestant outsiders who exerted their dominance over the natives with the support of the British government.
Ireland eventually achieved independence in 1921 following a war that ended with the treaty that led to the creation of Northern Ireland, which was (and still is) primarily home to the Protestant “unionists” whose sympathies lie with the United Kingdom as opposed to the Irish “republicans” to the south who are decidedly less fond of Great Britain.
That partition eventually spawned “The Troubles,” the bloody period of political violence primarily fueled by paramilitary groups on both sides (the British Army also got involved) that began in the 1960s and lasted until the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998.
Tensions have simmered down significantly over the past few decades, but there’s still plenty of bad blood between the two sides. As a result, it’s somewhat easy to understand why the Catholic university wants its fans to avoid ruffling more feathers than necessary during their time in Belfast.
HOWEVER…
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the jerseys Notre Dame specifically designed for the Friendship Four, which feature a shamrock and the word “Irish.”
I can’t blame the school for accepting an invite to the tourney, but it certainly seems like they didn’t think this one all the way through.