During the Euro 2020 final at Wembley, every time an Italian player got the ball many of the England fans booed, whistled and/or jeered. They were subjected to cat calls and insults, just because they were the opposition and the opponents and maybe even the enemy. Many England supporters, no doubt, felt their actions were justified, aiming to make life difficult for the Italians and to help their own team win. This is how most, maybe all sport, is seen: us versus them in a confrontational context during which the compulsion to compete and contest can morph into open hostility. 

However, there is another way to see a football match. It may well be, in one sense, an adversarial collision but it is also something else. It is an amazing exercise in mutual cooperation and inter-dependence, when two teams, together create what we call ‘the match’. If Italy had not turned up there could be no match. If all the players did not play football according to the rules of the game (more or less, most of the time) there would be chaos and the beautiful game would turn into an ugly mess. By working together, these two teams created something – a sporting spectacle, a cultural experience and a special event, to be watched and appreciated by millions. It may take two to tango but it takes a whole lot of players, officials, coaches and yes, spectators working cooperatively and positively together to make an international football match. 

This same sort of analysis can also be applied to other, very different, situations. If we move from Wembley to Stormont, for example, a number of interesting parallels appear. We recognise the adversarial nature of daily political confrontations. The ‘we have to win, you have to lose’ mentality is never far below the surface. The opposite side becomes the ‘other sort’ to be beaten at all costs. Open hostility, name-calling and competitive exercises in insulting language and ridicule have, at times, become normalised. 

On the other hand, the political process could be seen very differently, as an exercise in productive cooperation and an opportunity to work together to create something positive for everybody. Maybe they could even work together to construct what we would be happy to call an inclusive, effective and fully-functioning government. This, of course, would require an acknowledgment and acceptance by all the political parties that they are in fact mutually inter-dependent and that working productively together would ultimately be in everyone’s best interests. Health, education, housing and security for example would be best served within a context of genuine cooperative effort and are undoubtedly harmed within an openly adversarial atmosphere of confrontation and distrust.  

Such a change would represent an enormous cultural shift on behalf of our political leaders and even if the potential for real positive social change was recognised and embraced within an over-arching co-operative paradigm, we all know it is not very likely to happen. Asking our politicians to play nicely together seems hopelessly, optimistically naïve. Despite sometimes finding common ground in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, too often such efforts have been knocked off course through recurring displays of mutual antipathy by government ministers. 

Creating a genuinely co-operative Assembly in Stormont at the current time seems about as likely to happen as English football fans applauding all opposing teams in respectful recognition of their great skill and contribution to a shared experience. Mind you, as supporters of the Northern Ireland team would say, we dare to dream. 

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