One of the Institute’s most compelling programs was Belfast United, which the Institute administered in Northern Ireland for over a decade.

The genesis of the program took shape at a Dublin luncheon meeting in 1989 involving Dan Doyle and then U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Margaret Heckler. During the luncheon, Doyle and Ambassador Heckler watched with horror as a live television report inadvertently caught the brutal killing of two British soldiers who, in TV view of millions, were murdered in violent retribution for the prior killing of an Irish Catholic by a British soldier. The murders of the two British soldiers took place during the funeral march for the previously killed Irish Catholic.

The planned one-hour luncheon meeting turned into a three-hour discussion of how the Institute could in some way help stem the violence that had overrun Northern Ireland for centuries. The concept of Belfast United was hatched during the luncheon. A year later, the Institute established a Belfast United office at the University of Ulster in Jordanstown, Northern Ireland. For over a decade, Belfast United became one of the most impactful programs in the history of “The Troubles.”

Belfast United allowed the Institute to work with a group of coaches and academicians from Northern Ireland. The core concept involved placing equal numbers of Catholic and Protestant youth on the same teams. Team members trained together for a period of months, and then engaged in competitive games in Northern Ireland, followed by an all-expense paid trip to the United States. Over the course of the decade, more than 1,000 Irish Catholic and Protestant youth took part in Belfast United. When President Bill Clinton visited Northern Ireland in 1995 to declare peace, Belfast United was praised in many quarters as one of the most effective programs in bringing about the peace.

Belfast United led to many other activities in Northern Ireland, including three Belfast Scholar-Athlete Games and the sending of many distinguished coaches to Northern Ireland on behalf of the Institute. One young man who did a remarkable job in the early 90’s was Patrick Lynch. A graduate of Brown University where he had starred in basketball, Lynch participated in two separate tours in Northern Ireland. During both tours, Lynch worked with hundreds of Catholic and Protestant youth through basketball. Now the Attorney General of Rhode Island, Lynch played a pivotal role in the success of Belfast United.

Another of the many great coaches the Institute sent to Northern Ireland was the legendary former Providence College coach, Joe Mullaney. The following piece appeared in Sports Illustrated about Coach Mullaney’s Northern Ireland experience.

Jack Cavanaugh
Sports Illustrated
November 25, 1991

On a cold morning in January, 70-year-old Joe Mullaney boards a train for the two-hour trip from Dublin to Belfast. There, at St. Malachy’s School-whose campus is hard by the infamous Crumlin Road Jail, where a number of Irish Republican Army leaders have been imprisoned, and the Girdwood Barracks, a foreboding British garrison post-Mullaney conducts a basketball clinic for 35 Catholic teenagers. The students, many of whom wear jerseys with either O’Neal or Barkley on the back, listen attentively as Mullaney warns them not to pattern their games after Shaquille O’Neal’s or Charles Barkley’s or that of any other behemoth in the NBA.

“Everything is strength with Shaq and a lot of the big guys,” says Mullaney, who should know. He was the coach who put Providence on the college basketball map in the 1950’s and who, during a two-year stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, coached the team to the seventh game of the 1970 NBA Finals against the New York Knicks. “Most of them can’t shoot from beyond the foul line,” Mullaney says of the NBA giants. “So don’t try to play like them.”

Among those at the clinic is Billy Ingram, an assistant professor of sports and leisure studies at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, who has come over to say hello to Mullaney. Ingram, a Protestant living in Belfast, coaches basketball for Belfast United, a program begun in Northern Ireland in 1989 by Dan Doyle. A former basketball coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Doyle is the founder and executive director of the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island. Belfast United, a program run by the Institute, seeks to get Catholic and Protestant teenagers to play together on the same basketball team.

That is not small feat in a country where, as a rule, Catholics and Protestants not only do not play on the same teams but also rarely even play against each other.

Mullaney began working for Belfast United in late 1993, coaching Catholic and Protestant players in and around Belfast. Then last June he coached some of the same players when Belfast United traveled to the U.S. and played games against high school all-stars from Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

“They got killed by the American teams, but the Belfast United kids got along great with each other,” says Mullaney, who was a captain of the underdog Holy Cross team that won the NCAA championship in 1947 with a freshman point guard named Bob Cousy.

When they gather for their first practice, Protestant and Catholic players stand apart, and there is a palpable uneasiness between the two groups. But, Mulaney says, once they start playing, basketball helps them form a bond.

In an effort to bring the players still closer together, each Catholic shares accommodations with a Protestant at a host’s house when the team makes it annual visit to the States. “That’s the purpose of Belfast United-bringing young Catholics and Protestants together through the medium of sport,” says Doyle.

Unfortunately, the players of Belfast United don’t get to be the teammates for more than a few months. The team roster changes each season so that other youths can participate. The players typically spend about two months practicing together before their trip to the U.S. Because of the strict demarcation between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast, the players seldom meet after their season.

“I’ve made some good friends among the Protestants I’ve played with on Belfast United,” says Adrian Fulton, 21, one of Northern Ireland’s best young athletes. He plays for the University of Ulster and for Star of the Sea in the Budweiser Super League. Sponsored by the American beer company, this league is the top echelon of Irish basketball. “I’ve visited some of them in their neighborhoods, and some of them come to my house, which never would have happened if it hadn’t been for Belfast United.”

To help establish lasting friendships, over the past two years players have held reunions during the Christmas season. These have taken place at “neutral” locations such as the University of Ulster, which has both Catholic and Protestant students. “There’s got to be some continuity over the long term,” Ingram says. “And we’re trying to find a way.”

The racket inside the gymnasium at the Dublin City University sports complex is deafening. But on the far left court, where Mullaney is conducting a practice session with nice women basketball players, no seems to mind the noise.

Mullaney, who will be returning to Belfast the next day, has a lot to contend with on this particular afternoon: Rock music blares as 50 people take part in an erobics class on the adjacent center court and 35 or so Gaelic footballers work out on the third court. Because of the din, Mullaney must raise his voice to be heard, first by the Dublin City women’s team and later by the men’s squad as he tries to teach the matchup defense that he devised more than three decades ago and tat is still used by many college basketball teams in the U.S.

Would Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor have tolerated such distractions at a Laker practice? Would Lenny Wilkens, Jimmy Walker and John Thompson have put up with such a din when they played at Providence College? Not likely. But Mullaney’s current players don’t seem fazed. Mullaney himself, who coached all of the above-mentioned U.S. stars, makes do without a whimper.

“Because of all the yelling I have to do to be heard, I find myself hoarse after a practice,” says Mullaney, who is fit, trim and able to run back-to-back two-hour practices. Neither of his Dublin City teams is about to crash the top 20, not even in Ireland, where even Budweiser League basketball is overshadowed by soccer, Gaelic football, hurling and rugby. But Dublin City is determined to improve its club basketball program (all college sports in Ireland are played on the club level, as they are in most of Europe), and thus the presence of Coach Mullaney.

In him the Irish players have a master. But after coaching at the top levels in both colleges and the pros in the U.S., Mullaney finds himself frustrated at times as he tries to teach basketball fundamentals-not to mention the matchup defense-to young people who in many cases would rather be playing other sports. “I remember how I was about to give a clinic in Belfast, and the kids were playing soccer in the gym,” says the coach, who led Providence to nice consecutive seasons of more than 20 victories (1958-67) and who spent a total of 18 seasons coaching the Friars during two stints at the school. “And they kept right on playing until I blew my whistle to start the clinic. They paid attention and were enthusiastic about learning the game, but until I got their attention, their minds were on soccer, not basketball.”

Particularly vexing to Mullaney are the frequent absences of players from his practice sessions. “If there’s a conflict, my two best players will practice with the Budweiser League team they play with. But I can understand, because university basketball is a club sport and the games don’t mean a thing.”

That’s true even when six-year-old Dublin City University plays its crosstown rival, 402-year-old Trinity College, as it did during the 23-team university basketball championships held March 2-5. But Mullaney still does not like to lose. “In January the men’s team lost a game to Green Mountain College from Vermont, which was on a tour of Ireland,” says John Kerrane, the sport and recreation director at Dublin City. “When it was over, Joe had fire in his eyes because the team hadn’t executed some plays properly.”

During his recent five-month stay in Ireland, his second trip to the country, Mullaney, who was accompanied by his wife, Jane, was given an apartment and reimbursed for expenses but received no salary. That was his arrangement with Dublin City University, the Institute for International Sport and Belfast Unlimited. Noel Keating, head of the Irish Basketball Association, says Mullaney is having an impact in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, as well as among Catholic and Protestants on the Belfast United basketball teams.

“Joe’s done a wonderful job,” says John Sugden, a professor of sports and leisure studies at the University of Ulster and a coordinator of the Belfast United program. “We’ve had 500 years of strife, and the impact of Belfast United may be only a drop in the bucket. But quite often I’ll meet one of the kids who played on the team, and he’ll say, ‘You know, that was the best thing I ever did.’”