Land of the Giants
Belfast’s hugely popular hockey team, made up mostly of Canadians, has become a unifying force in fractious Northern Ireland

BY DAVE BIDINI

“Bearded” children are everywhere. Hundreds of them. With the drop of the puck that begins the last home game of the Belfast Giants’ inaugural season, the kids wait on every pass, every missed check, until one of their Canadian heroes—maybe “Packer” or “Hoady” or “Wardy”—gets a shot on net. With that, a collective gasp. At the first pause in play, the kids stand, make little fists and sing Stompin’ Tom Connors’s “The Hockey Song.”

When play resumes, the children fall silent again until, finally, a Giant wrests the puck from a Nottingham Panther, makes his move, then lifts it over the goaltender’s shoulder. The beards go wild, crying with delight. The goal puts Belfast in the lead, and for a moment on this March 2001 evening, everything is perfect in the land of the Giants.

Hockey fans in Northern Ireland are not what you would call typical. Hours after a Giants player told a reporter that, back in Canada, players traditionally don’t shave during the playoffs, fans snapped up plastic beards the team management had scrambled to produce. It’s this sort of enthusiasm that can be found in supporters of Northern Ireland’s first pro hockey team and the most recent member of the five-year-old Ice Hockey Superleague. (There are six other teams: five in England, one in Scotland.) Fans ooh at body checks and breakaways as if they’re high-wire acts and aah at the most fundamental of plays: icings, penalty kills, offsides.

This night at the 7,100-seat arena in Belfast’s new Odyssey entertainment complex, nobody sits still. Apart from the little Captain Ahabs, I watch mothers and fathers, teenage girls, the odd old-timer and crews of young men clapping along to piped-in music and the live sounds of The Rhythm Crew—four teens hitting conga drums on a stage behind the opposing team’s net.

One way to explain the symbiosis between the players and their followers is that hockey is simply a great game. But it’s not as if you can just plop it down anywhere and expect it to flourish. (Witness the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.) A better explanation for the success of the Giants—whose frequent 90-percent-plus attendance rate is already the best in the league—is that it has become an outlet for people anxious to rid themselves of Belfast’s aura of war and civil unrest.

Ever since the Giants put together a winning streak in the middle of their first season in 2000, they’ve become a flash point for cultural optimism and unity, bringing Catholics and Protestants together under one roof, supporting one team. Indeed, the team’s slogan is: “In the land of the Giants, everyone is equal.”

One of the first people I met at the Odyssey was Marc Maisonneuve, a French television reporter doing a story about Northern Ireland. He’d gone to Falls Road, the old Catholic enclave, where “everyone mentioned how much they loved the Giants. Then I went down to Shankill, the Protestant fortress, and all anyone could talk about were the Giants and how they were going to win the championship. It was the only thing they had in common. So I knew that to get the story of Belfast, I had to come to the rink.”

Related Links The following links are for informational and educational use only. Reader's Digest does not endorse or guarantee any information contained therein. http://www.belfastgiants.com/ Official website of the Belfast Giants. This site has the player profiles in the "Locker Room" section. Game schedules are listed as well. http://www.iceweb.co.uk/ Ice Hockey Superleague website http://www.kingdomofthegiants.com/ Unofficial Giants fans website by Stephen Glover (mentioned in the article)

Over the past quarter century, British and Irish authorities—not to mention a parade of diplomats and negotiators from around the world—have tried to solve the Irish peace puzzle. The roots of this strife go back hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s that violence put a stranglehold on Belfast. It’s ironic, then, that a team playing a game known for its violence has done so much to coax Catholics and Protestants into the public domain.

It was Montreal-born Bob Zeller’s idea to establish a nonsectarian environment for sports fans of all classes and faiths. In his late 50s, with a balding pate and salt-and-pepper beard, the Giants managing director ran the British National League’s Guildford Flames before jumping to the expansion Giants. An astute businessman, Zeller (whose family started the Zellers store chain) was also drawn to Belfast because of its untapped sporting market. “We knew people here were ready for something new,” he explains, “and hockey—what with the long tradition of Irish emigration to Canada—seemed an ideal choice. They’d just built the Odyssey, so the Giants as a tenant made sense.”

Northern Ireland’s only exposure to professional hockey had been through the odd ESPN rebroad-cast of a National Hockey League (NHL) game in the wee hours. And because it was not well-known in Ireland, hockey arrived unencumbered by the political dogma attached to hurling and Gaelic football—traditional Irish-Catholic games—and rugby and football (soccer)—traditionally Protestant sports.

Knowing this, Zeller took steps to ensure that his team remain nonpartisan, naming it after Finn MacCool, a mythological Irish warrior said to have been a giant and known to both Protestants and Catholics alike. When designing team jerseys, Zeller chose red and teal over the more obvious—and provocative—orange and green.

Another of Zeller’s edicts was to prohibit the singing of nationalist songs during games—a rite at rugby and football matches. Not only did this ease tensions in the stands, it also allowed for new Giants songs to be born, which helped to establish the team’s identity. During the second period of the game against the Panthers, I heard a group of young fans, sitting with beers between their knees, work up a new one: “Bacon, fries, sausage roll! C’mon Giants, get us a goal!”

“At first, we had to instruct some fans on how to behave,” Zeller tells me one afternoon in a tiny press room inside the Odyssey. He says the announcer informed fans of team policies at the game’s outset, but that the crowd took care of things anyway. “They demanded of each other a certain fairness and decorum,” Zeller says. “At the first few games, people booed the other team’s goals, but we told them, ‘You might do that at football games, but not here.’ They responded favourably, because finally there was a place to go where they weren’t going to be part of sectarian hooliganism.”

The giants’ first home game, in December 2000, was preceded by a week of newspaper articles espousing the game’s virtue, beauty—and rules. A long-haired, scowling, cartoon Finn MacCool was portrayed making referee signals (icing, offside, slashing), and the Newtownards Chronicle ran a full-page hockey preview explaining what a puck is made of, why players fighting is tolerated and the thickness of the ice.

Stephen Glover, architect of one of the team’s unofficial web sites, describes the fans at the early games: “People sat there looking kind of stunned. I mean, compared to football, hockey is so fast. But after a few goals, they were right into it. And after the first fight, well, we were all fans.”

David Torrans, who runs a Belfast bookstore, believes hockey could have a beneficial effect on Irish sports. “I think football will learn from the Giants,” he says. “Their tradition is crumbling anyway, and perhaps this will show them that to survive, they must cast off the things that make it difficult for the average citizen to enjoy the matches.”

Most fans seem to share Torrans’s view. During the game’s second intermission, with the Giants leading 2-1, I speak with Sharon Gillespie of Davenport Publishing, which puts together the programs handed out to fans and that include the lineups and hockey’s rules.

“Rugby and football were mostly for boys and their dads, and you rarely found women there,” she says. “Giants games are great because the whole family can go. There’s no swearing or fighting in the stands.”

A few weeks before my arrival in Belfast, one of the stars of Northern Ireland’s national football team, Neil Lennon, was booed at home by Protestant fans because he plays for the Catholic Glasgow Celtic. He then told a reporter that he was starting to question whether Northern Ireland was worth playing for. Rather than reprimand Lennon for inflammatory remarks, as might have happened a few years ago, the Irish Football Association encouraged him back into the fold and at their next game handed out red cards that said, “Give a red card to bigotry.”

I asked Bob Zeller if he thought this was a result of the inroads Giants’ policies have made with sports fans’ behaviour. “Absolutely,” he said. “Others in the sporting community want to know how we’ve done what we’ve done. They realize that nonsectarianism is an idea whose time has come.”

Over the first two periods, it is easy to pick out my favourite Giants: Colin Ward and Paxton Schulte. They are opposites in their roles on the ice. “Wardy,” who hails from Edmonton, is a fast-skating playmaker with a predilection for clutch goals, while Schulte, the pride of Onoway, Alta., and known as Packer to everyone, is a crowd favourite whose penalty minutes equal his ice time.

Both are friendly, soft-spoken Canadians who escaped the North American minors to play professionally abroad. In Northern Ireland, they earn roughly $50,000 a season. (NHL players average about $2.4 million.) In fact, every Giant, save for one American, is a Canadian.

“I expected the worst,” Ward tells me. “You saw things on television—bombs and violence—and you got an impression.” But the reality, he says, is different. “People couldn’t be more friendly and supportive. My wife and I have a baby boy, and I’d have no problem raising him here. Really, it’s a hockey player’s dream to be accepted with such enthusiasm.”

Schulte concurs. “Everywhere I go, people shout, honk their horns,” he says. “They love the Giants.”

Before the start of the third period, the Giants are in relative command, and garrulous fans are waving their signs: “Hoad in the hole,” “We love you Pack,” “Gooo Giants Gooo!” Packer takes a poke at any Panther who comes near and a few times catches a respite in “The Shame Boys’ Penalty Box”—sponsored by the local police. In the third period, he lays a hit on a Panther in the corner and brings the crowd to its feet. Minutes later, Ward “undresses” the Panther defence and backhands a shot in from the slot. His goal finishes the Nottingham team, and the Giants win 4-2.

The postgame festivities are as moving as any I’ve seen. Giants captain Jeff Hoad—who at five foot ten had less chance of making the NHL—is handed a microphone. The Odyssey falls instantly silent. “We’d like to thank all of you for being with us since day one,” he tells the fans. “Your support has been the biggest reason for this team’s turnaround.” Hoad finishes to a thunderous ovation.

After the game, the Giants gather at long tables in the arena’s concourse and sign autographs. For nearly four hours, some 3,000 fans are lined up behind the velvet ropes, waiting to spend a moment with their unlikely heroes.

I greet a fellow I’d met before the game, coming to the Odyssey with other fans over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. I ask him what the victory means to him. “Being among these fans is something I just can’t explain,” he tells me. “I never thought I’d see this type of thing in Belfast. Before, you’d have police all around, keeping peace. But all there is now is that guy, over there.” He points to a security guard, who can’t yet be 20, his arms wrapped around another supporter, waving his flashlight and singing: “Bacon, fries, sausage roll!”

At press time, the Giants were in first place and headed for the 2002 playoffs. For more information about players on the Giants roster, and this year’s scheduled games, visit readersdigest.ca.

DAVE BIDINI’S LATEST BOOK IS TROPIC OF HOCKEY: MY SEARCH FOR THE GAME IN UNLIKELY PLACES. BIDINI IS ALSO A GUITARIST AND SINGER FOR TORONTO-BASED ROCK GROUP THE RHEOSTATICS.
*NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT PRIVACY.

ILLUSTRATION: © MICHAEL COOPER