Scottish Football and Northern Ireland: The Role of Sport in Communal Identification and Ethnonational Conflict

Nations and communities are created and represented through a myriad of different processes. Significantly, ‘everyday ’ social rituals and practices contribute in the same ways as political practices to the creation and maintenance of communities and nations. It is important, therefore, that the social rituals which create, maintain, and (re)imagine nations and communities are considered alongside the political rituals which serve similar purposes. One of the most noteworthy everyday practices is sport: the basis of the discussion presented in this paper. For members of diaspora and immigrant communities in particular, sport offers an outlet for them to express and retain their identity. What this paper examines is how football (soccer) in Glasgow, Scotland, represents an outlet of political and ethnic identity for members of the Irish diaspora in Scotland. The two main football teams in Scotland tend to be viewed as representative of the two sides of the Irish conflict: Glasgow Celtic with Catholic Nationalism and Glasgow Rangers with Protestant Unionism. Specifically, therefore, this paper examines how football in Glasgow reinforces and reifies the existing communal divisions between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Loyalists. While neither Rangers or Celtic openly encourage divisiveness or sectarianism, they are nonetheless inextricabl