A huge sense of excitement and anticipation should be dominating the preparations for the newly formed East Belfast GAA club's first ever game in the Down men's junior football championship on Sunday.
Unfortunately, while players, coaches and officials are undoubtedly looking forward to the historic match, they have also been forced to consider darker issues which have a direct connection with our troubled past.
The club was launched at the end of May, reviving Gaelic games in the east of the city after a gap of almost half a century, and its hurling, camogie and men's and women's football teams have since been swept along in a tide of enthusiasm.
Players have been recruited from all backgrounds, many of them entirely new to the GAA, and the Irish language campaigner Linda Ervine, who comes from the Protestant and unionist tradition, was named as the club's president.
The club's crest features its motto `Together' in Irish, English and Ulster Scots, as well as emblems including the Harland and Wolff cranes, a sunrise, a thistle and a shamrock, all emphasising its inclusive spirit.
It has been a hugely positive sporting initiative, but disturbingly the club found itself at the centre of a major security operation involving devices attached to the cars of members who were training at the council-owned Henry Jones playing fields last week.
After a telephone warning was received, vehicles were tracked to addresses in different parts of Belfast and suspicious objects were recovered by police for forensic analysis.
A man was arrested and subsequently released on bail, and a senior PSNI officer said that the incidents were being treated as sectarian hate crimes.
It will be recalled that the last GAA team in east Belfast, St Colmcille’s of Ballyhackamore, was driven out of existence in the early 1970s by sustained loyalist threats and violence.
What has been encouraging over recent days is the way in which politicians from all parties, including the DUP MP for East Belfast, Gavin Robinson, have condemned the intimidation of the new club.
People have an absolute right to play the sport of their choice in all parts of our divided society and there will be a widespread hope that East Belfast GAC not only survives but prospers in the seasons ahead.
