February, 1989. Both St. Patrick’s Athletic and Bohemians find themselves out of the FAI Cup at the first round. A few dormant weekends lie ahead as they watch on from the margins. Maybe a chance for players to catch up on holidays or work back some shifts they have taken off earlier in the season, but then a phone call comes through and the clubs go from the back pages to the front.
They’re off to Libya as a combined Irish selection under the stewardship of Brian Kerr and Billy Young and opposition politicians and the Unionist community aren’t happy.
In the words of Eamon McCann, Colonel Gaddafi was considered ‘the Devil himself’ by Western Governments and media outlets throughout the 1980s.
Their was context to this view, Gaddafi being a sponsor in finance and arms to anti-state agents such as the Provisional IRA and Palestinian Resistance groups had earned himself the ire of Ronald Reagan’s United States and Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.
Just two months previously in December 1988 Gaddafi’s agents had been blamed for the Lockerbie bombing which downed a trans-continental flight over the Scottish town killing all 243 passengers on board and 11 on the ground.
Libya was a pariah state.
While the world baulked at the Libyan regime the cafe’s of Tripoli and Benghazi at times throughout the ’80s echoed to the sound of Irish accents as Beef barons and Government Trade delegations traversed between Dublin and Tripoli concluding massive deals that would be subject to Tribunal as the ’90’s began to see Ireland move away from the hair-shirt politics of the past.
On a more subterranean level the Gaddafi regime in the wake of the IRA/INLA Hunger Strikes of 1981 re-established old links with the Provisionals that would see them send in excess of $40 million worth of Arms to the IRA from Tripoli docks to various drop off points across Ireland.
Into this tense atmosphere land the Bohs and St.Pats players. Are they a front for a trade deal? Are they masquerading as Jack Charlton’s Irish squad? Are they wanted?
‘In League With Gaddafi’ is told through the eyes of the players who were there. Telling the story of a time of high political stakes, of two nations linked together through necessity and sadness and the universality of football.
Director – Kevin Brannigan available for interview
kevinbrannigan@hotmail.com
0871275453