YOU don’t have to travel too far around north Belfast to find its jagged edges, social and economic deprivation and lack of facilities and services.
Large swathes of this part of the city have suffered neglect for generations.
For a significant percentage of the population the living is hard, and the underclass grows steadily. It’s the kind of place that seems to juggle more problems than it can manage.
The schools, charities, community workers and local businesses all do their best, but it seems parts of the place will always be a troubled soul.
Sport has often been the area’s salvation and the ceaseless volunteerism of the committed few.
Na Piarsaigh CLG is one of many sports clubs in north Belfast that stubbornly shines through winter’s bleakness.
For the last number of weeks, green and gold flags have fluttered from lampposts around the Antrim Road, Limestone Road, Cliftonville Road and Newington area.
These are the proud colours of Na Piarsaigh CLG, a nod to Brother Leonard who helped establish the club in the early 1950s.
Pearse’s claimed the Antrim Junior Football Championship title last month, only the second time in the club’s history they’ve managed that feat.
On Sunday afternoon, Gerry Ross and Marcus Kelly's senior footballers will travel to Brewster Park to face Ulster opponents Newtownbutler First Fermanaghs to discover the infinite possibilities of where sport can take you, that the Holy Grail just doesn’t end on a cool Friday night in Dunsilly.
Regardless of the grade you play at, the pursuit of sporting excellence never really ends. It only ends when you declare it so.
In densely populated urban centres, it is easy to miss the volunteering spirit of clubs like Pearse’s.
If you surveyed 20 passers-by about the significance of the green and gold flags fluttering overhead, there’s a good chance half of them wouldn’t know that they belong to Na Piarsaigh CLG which are there to celebrate the club's junior championship triumph while also speculating what Sunday might bring.
If you took a trip out to Maghera in south Derry and saw the green and gold flags and bunting overhead and asked 20 passers-by about their significance, every single one of them would know why they’re up there.
That’s the difference between the GAA in an urban area such as north Belfast and a rural town. Parish boundaries in the city can be thick and blurred. You can lose yourself in the city too and be distracted by other things, other sports and past-times.
But when it comes to the membership of, say, Pearse’s or Glen Maghera they are one in the same.
After the Dunloy hurlers won three-in-a-row last year, Gregory O’Kane broke it down in simple terms what a local GAA club actually is.
“People talk about clubs," O'Kane, “really and truly, it’s just families when you think about it. Without that we are nothing. And that’s the GAA.”
Over the years, the Pearse’s club has been sustained by a few families, made all the more difficult without having a place they can call their own.
And when a couple of those families burn themselves out and aren’t replaced, that’s when an urban club can run into difficulty.
Na Piarsaigh CLG has teetered on the brink of extinction several times since its birth in 1951.
I remember sitting in McLaughlin’s Bar at the top of the New Lodge area over 20 years ago and interviewing several Pearse’s men, led at that time by Frankie Campbell, who all fretted about the future of their club and were making a desperate plea for better facilities in north Belfast.
Reflecting on that meeting now, they were club members – families - who were probably running on empty. Given the dearth of sports facilities in north Belfast, I didn’t give Pearse’s a chance of seeing out the ‘Noughties’.
But volunteerism always finds a way. It’s resourceful and recuperative by nature.
The floodlit facilities at Waterworks Multi-Sports complex and the ‘Crickey’ pitch helped re-energise the club.
Better links have been established with the local primary schools dotted around north Belfast too and, slowly but surely, the club’s underage structures received a badly needed shot in the arm that directly resulted in last month’s Junior title.
“Not having a pitch,” says Pearse’s clubman Tomas O’Neill, “not having a home, not having a physical base, our structures have therefore always been intangible – you’re chasing venues, you’re chasing halls. But once you get a bit of success you need to crystallise it and build on it.”
Driving through Newington, a working-class area of north Belfast, O’Neill’s heart soared when he saw a couple of kids on the street wearing Pearse’s green and gold fist-passing and fielding the ball.
“It’s about the visibility of our games and the club’s colours,” he said.
Tomorrow night at the Devenish Complex in west Belfast, two Pearse’s players – Piaras Donaghy and Liam Deegan - will receive Antrim GAA Allstar awards to acknowledge theirs and the efforts of everyone at the club for realising a dream.
I don’t know Piaras Donaghy but I interviewed him ahead of the awards night. He explained how the sun rises and falls on Na Piarsaigh CLG for him, regardless of medals or individual awards, and the thought of transferring to one of the bigger GAA clubs in west Belfast was always unconscionable to him.
The fact that the club exists at all is good enough for him because he gets the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and father.
“I never sought recognition from anybody else other than the people in my area and in my team,” Donaghy said.
Donaghy’s interview was inspiring on so many levels but particularly so because he is living proof that you can have a deep sense of place in the city, just like anywhere else in the GAA, that parish boundaries only become blurred if you want them to be.
“The award,” the 29-year-old midfielder said, “is only going to benefit us as a community and a club in north Belfast, that there will be more eyes on us now and we might get a few people interested and wanting to play and staying on this side of the city.”
Never will an Allstar award be utilised and shared for the benefit of the club collective than when Piaras Donaghy walks onto the Devenish stage tomorrow night.
For every Pearse’s GAA member, and indeed every underdog that inhabits the GAA, Piaras Donaghy’s cherished words will reverberate for a long time because they reach a place deep in the soul of every volunteer we know.
