The structuration of a sporting social system? Northern Ireland fans, ‘Football for All’ and the creation of the ‘Green and White Army’

In terms of the extant literature to date on sport and fandom in the divided society of Northern Ireland, academic attention has focused almost exclusively upon its apparently contentious nature. However, to date there has been a dearth of actual empirical data to inform such analyses. This paper is designed to help to rectify this deficit, by drawing upon interviews with Northern Ireland football supporters and Irish Football Association staff to explore their co-creation of the ‘Football for All’ campaign which aimed to challenge sectarian fan behaviour within the national stadium. This resulted in the previously variegated Northern Ireland fan base becoming the ‘Green and White Army’ (GAWA), an informal collective identity for supporters. In continually (re)producing the GAWA as a ‘social system,’ it is argued that fans are knowledgeable actors who continually draw upon what Giddens (1984) refers to as practical and discursive consciousness. Informed by Giddens’ structuration theory, the paper argues that pace the current policies of UEFA and FIFA to close stadia in the event of ‘discriminatory’ fan behaviour, priority should instead be given to supporting fan activism to effectively challenge such behaviour at matches; particularly given the potential for social control over supporters in a situated geographical space.