You come through Omagh and you take that cheeky right towards Fintona, the one you think that no-one else knows.
Two cars follow you off the beaten track and you know where they’re headed too.
You’re shifting gears as the road twists and rises but soon you’ll be staring at a bumper anyway as another driver with two flags hanging out either window is keen to remind you that there’s loads of time to make it to Clones.
Up over the mountain towards Fivemiletown, yellow licence plates are joined by Donegal registrations but, today, just like any other championship Sunday, you’re on the one road bound for the same destination.
Some poor soul coming in the other direction has decided to stop to make way for oncoming traffic in these tight lanes – a nice gesture, sure, but he’ll soon regret that when he sees the line of cars that you can see in your mirror climbing up the hill that overlooks the south of Tyrone.
A stream of cars is making its way down the back roads towards the home of Ulster football and you’re just one of them. There’s a rush in the air, a purpose, you’re part of something bigger that you can almost feel pulling you south towards the Monaghan border.
Trees are leaning in from the side of the winding roads – they’re being held up by trees at the other side as you become enclosed by green. When you come back out for air, it’s yellow, it’s fields, it’s animals, it’s farmlands. Around these neck of the Tyrone woods, it’s as Ireland as you can get it.
By now, you’re not even too sure what road takes you to Clones. For a provincial stadium, its signposts are pretty pants but then so are all of them on this route. It’s okay on a Sunday like this though because you can just follow the rest of them safe in the knowledge there’s only one place they’re all going – even when it doesn’t seem right.
You throw a wave to the old farmer who’s never let something as abstract as a day of the week tell him when he should and shouldn’t work.
You curse the Donegal driver in front of you slamming the breaks when it was completely unnecessary.
You see a Tyrone driver pull over to check a tyre and a man in green and gold slow up alongside to ask if everything is okay.
You might be rivals by county but you’re still the same at heart. Everyone on this road is getting to St. Tiernach’s Park by hook or by crook. The football will look after itself.
You don’t even realise you’re there when you see the car in front of you spin around to park facing for home.
You drive on down the country lane lined with vehicles and people veering in and out of them and it hits you that you’ve crossed the border. You’ve only noticed because the car park sign is in euros, not pounds, and for a brief moment, you shit yourself.
You ask the girl at the gate of the field as nicely as you can if they take sterling and you’re as apologetic as hell. Of course they take sterling, what were you worried about? You park up and you head for the centre. No big deal.
Walking down any of the roads into Clones is like a time warp. You see every man, woman and dog with a bit of land welcoming cars in – some are even offering toilet services and those who are already parked up are at their boots getting stuck into sandwiches and tea.
Two big men, nearing 13 feet between them, are eating with their polo shirts tucked into their jeans and their caps planted firmly atop their heads. You can tell they’re nervous about the match. You can tell they must’ve played some ball themselves when they were younger. You can’t tell much all else but for the fact that one of them is from Tyrone and the other is from Donegal.
Some kid has a half and half shirt for the two counties – half white, half green. You always roll your eyes when you see that but this one is particularly curious considering how close the counties are. You reason that it must just be two GAA mad parents from different sides of the border who simply couldn’t agree.
When you stand outside the Creighton Hotel on a sunny summer Sunday, it’s pretty magical. At either side of you are two unforgiving hills littered with colour and fever and people of all ages from every background with different stories to tell and by Jesus they’ll tell you them.
You see the lads down for early drinks, the families stocked up with their lunch bags and the couples queuing outside the mobile takeaways dotted along the streets. It smells like the Ulster championship in Clones. It sounds like it.
The relaxed view on sterling comes in handy when you’re looking for a bite because anyone who knows Clones would know that they’d have to walk to the other side of town – up the opposite hill than the one the stadium is on – just to find the damn bank machine. The town bank machine. You take the hit on the exchange rate just to spare yourself a hill walk because you’re going to need that energy later.
You file in through the gates, the shop signs are signalling both currencies, programmes are being flogged and, amidst some of your most hateful neighbours, you realise you’re home. You realise this is where you belong.
This is the place where magic happens.
Imagine what Brexit could do to a day like that, the cornerstone of Ulster GAA. If a border returned to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of Europe, it would be utter chaos.
Imagine the Donegal drivers coming in through Tyrone or the northerners whipping around mountain roads back into the south. Imagine pound coins being traded over willy-nilly or that bond that still existing between two sets of people separated merely, right now, by their own GAA borders.
Imagine the family with the half and half jersey.
This is the Tyrone/Monaghan border at the minute.
Imagine what a hard border would do to championship Sundays. pic.twitter.com/y3R27wcaLJ
— Conán Doherty (@ConanDoherty) June 18, 2017
Imagine thousands upon thousands descending on a tiny town in Ireland for some of the biggest days that they’ll remember forever.
Imagine the cars lining up along the country lanes or people literally walking across the border and into Clones.
Imagine how the world would change for everyone, most of whom all voted against this nonsense.
Leaving politics aside, this would completely disrupt the way of life of good Gaels all over Ireland, particularly in the nine counties of Ulster.
Most of these people live solely in a GAA world. Their rivalries, their enemies are on the field. Their points of interest are random towns like Clones, like Ballybofey, like Enniskillen, Omagh and all the rest – anywhere with grass, posts and a stand. The majority of them are minding their own business, engrossed in their own world and they’re happy to let the rest work itself out.
They don’t need to concern themselves too much with partitionism or any of that because they’ve managed to create an existence that’s above all that – one that’s independent of the history and the struggles. By doing so, they bloody well get on with their lives and they show everyone else how to do just that because the way they’ve internalised how this country is set up is by simply looking at a GAA map – not a political one.
Who cares, basically, what currency you use if you can still live the life you want to live?
You’d have thought that was the north’s and the peace process’ biggest success, realising that and spreading that state of mind. Realising that you can live here and you can still be yourself. That you can co-exist with people of different backgrounds because you can exist in your own world anyway – nobody’s going to stop you.
Imagine now throwing a border into a championship Sunday in Clones. Suddenly, the lives of thousands are changed for the worse. The way they internalise everything, changed. They’re reminded every day that they’re not really living in their own world. Some of them are basically told every day that they’re not even living in Ireland.
Everything would change. The progress would be wiped. The GAA and days like Sunday in Clones would suffer greatly. The culture, the friendliness, the realisation that we’re actually all the same – north of the border and south of it – would be at risk and in its place you’d have bitterness again. Resentment. Anger.
When people can’t just get on with their own lives, that’s when they fight back.
You’d be better just letting them park their bloody cars along the country roads so they can share sandwiches and argue about the match.
You’d be better letting them live in that world. And letting them get on with their own lives.
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