Derry City documentary a timely reminder of what football really means

Derry is a funny wee city. Sitting on the banks of the river Foyle, right on the border of two countries that don't want anything to do with the place.

As you can guess, being from 'the place no one wants' has its baggage.

Most people outside of Derry can barely understand a word you say, you get the odd 'better not let him leave his bag unattended' joke thrown your way, and you also have the 'is it Derry or Londonderry?'' exchange to deal with, which is...

'Aw well I call it Derry but some other people call it Londonderry, you know, it's ahh...it's a complicated situation hi.'

Always fun.

Always asked after a few pints.

Usually followed by: 'here, I must go to the bar - good chatting to you'.

But of all this baggage, perhaps the heaviest load of the lot is a disconcerting bitterness - the type of bitterness that comes from a people being forgotten about at the best of times, and told that they're not wanted at the worst of times.

The being 'forgotten about' was usually a university being given to a tiny town instead of the second biggest city in Northern Ireland, or a house being given to a well-to-do single woman instead of an impoverished family of eight who'd been sharing a terraced house with another impoverished family of eight. The being told 'they're not wanted' was a day like Bloody Sunday, when 14 innocent young men were shot dead by British soldiers in the city.

Understandably these incidents have left emotional scars on the city that have never, and will never, heal. They sit in the subconsciousness of every Derry man and woman - they leave us with a bitterness against the socio-political situation that allowed such tragedies to occur.

But the great thing about Derry though, is that despite all of this - the Troubles, the politics, the poverty - the Derry 'wans' have always found a way to uplift themselves and their own wee city; perhaps knowing that no one was ever going to do it for them.

Nope, they don't let those non-Derry 'wans' tell them that they're not good enough, they just go out and prove that they are. They go out and make music, star in films, write books, and find something they're not really ever supposed to find: happiness.

A Guy King documentary titled 'Different League: The Derry City Story' that aired on BBC on Monday night tells the story of a gang of four Derry men who did just that in the early 1980s - not just to find their own happiness, but to bring happiness to a whole community in need of something other than the Troubles.

They did that through football.

The football-mad city had been without a senior team for over a decade when a group of four ex-players decided that, no matter what the cost, they would find a way to bring the sport they loved back to the city they loved.

"I always felt it was a football city. People were always talking about football and everywhere you went you would've seen fellas playing football in the street. So we just felt we needed senior football back in Derry."

- Terry Harkin

As 'Different League: The Derry City Story' attests however, bringing professional football to the city was no easy task.

Many attempts had been made in vain in the decade after Derry City were kicked out of the Northern Irish league due to a Ballymena United team bus being attacked and burned out prior to a game. License application, after license application, after license application were denied, and the city was seen as a 'no-go zone' by the Irish Football Association in Northern Ireland. Seen as a place too troubled, too violent, too war-torn, for football.

Derry was more than just petrol bombs however, and its people wanted to prove it.

"When you're told something cannot happen, it's an invitation to make it happen."

- Eddie Mahon

Following a final emphatic 'no' from the IFA, Derry's 'Gang of Four' - Tony O‘Doherty, Eddie Mahon, Eamonn McLaughin and Terry Harkin - decided to look south beyond the border for a footballing lifeline.

Through countless meetings in Derry, Dublin and everywhere in-between, a successful friendly against the biggest team in the Republic of Ireland, Shamrock Rovers - who were managed by proud Derry man Jim McLaughlin - and approval from the IFA (the trickiest bit, as you'll see in the documentary), they earned their lifeline.

Senior football was back in Derry. The 'cloud had lifted from over the city'.

And the Derry 'wans' were buzzing about.

12,000 fans would attend the Candystripes' first home league game since the late 60s, 3,000 would travel to Monaghan for their first away game, 19,000 (nearly a quarter of the city's population) would endure a 10 hour trip to Cork for an FAI Cup quarter final.

The football they were travelling around the country to watch wasn't half bad either. In the late 1980s Derry City won a first division, became the first - and only - team in Irish footballing history to win all three domestic trophies in one season, and even welcomed European heavyweights Benfica, then managed by Sven-Goran Eriksson, to the Brandywell.

Matchday was the holiday from the reality of the Troubles that the people of Derry needed, a way to stop the rioting on William Street on a Saturday (for a few hours anyways), and a way to open the city up to the outside world for the first time in decades.

"From the corner of my eye a hint of blue in the black sky. A ray of hope, a beam of light. An end to thirty years of night. The church-bells ring, the children sing - what is this strange and beautiful thing? It's the sunrise."

- The Divine Comedy, Sunrise.

It's hard to say that the re-formation of the Candystripes was the 'sunrise' for the city that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland and brought about the peace process.

It didn't. John Hume was the man who did that for Derry (you can listen to my short play on John Hume here - shameless plug). What it did do though, is show the world that Derry wasn't just a place of political violence, a place of unthinkable poverty, a 'no-go zone', and it 'restored the true spirit of the people of the city’ according to Hume himself.

And at times like these, when football is being ripped from communities by billionaires looking to franchise clubs and line their pockets even further (if it's actually even possible), 'Different League: The Derry City Story' is a timely reminder of what the sport really is.

A reminder that football is, at its heart, a sport that brings happiness.

A sport that brings people together.

A sport that can even stop the rioting on William Street for a few hours on a Saturday evening.

That is what football truly is - and the only place to find it nowadays is at your little community-run club that play just round the corner. Handy, eh?

You can watch 'Different League: A Derry City Story on BBC iPlayer. You can also become a member of Derry City football club here.