Ben Bilodeau, Andrew Brewer, Seth Hill & Max Tokunaga's footage filmed by: Brendan Barry. Jack Kyle's footage filmed by: Malachi Gerard and Mia Lambson.

Huw Richards, New York Times
(here: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/sports/rugby/brian-odriscoll-irelands-rugby-ironman.html?referer=&_r=0)

Video: STORAGE UNIT

“This is an organisation fighting a fairly successful rearguard action against the liberalising and secularising tide of history. It can’t take us back to the days when the swings were chained up on Sunday and Belfast was described as a “city of religious nightclubs”.”

Louis MacNeice wrote about Belfast in his 1938 verse poem, ‘Autumn Journal’. Of the adjectives and descriptors he shared, he spoke of a Belfast with "Free speech nipped in the bud". This has long been a defining, unfortunate aspect of Belfast and Northern Irish life. http://brianjohnspencer.tumblr.com/post/108394446978/free-speech-nipped-in-the-bud Jack Kyle wrote about the absence of free speech in Northern Ireland in his 1966 letter to the Irish Times, principally a note condemning the work and words of Ian Paisley. He wrote: "As I write this letter, I am wondering if I was living in Ireland now, would I have the courage to post it? After the recent events in Ulster, I am doubtful. Some time ago a protestant friend was striving to increase the harmony between Catholic and Protestant - word of this reached the ears of the staunch upholders of Ulster Protestantism - his home was subjected to day and night telephone calls for a month, many of them revolting. The culmination was a threat to the life of his wife, which forced him to ask for police protection. Such is the state of democracy in Ulster - freedom of thought, word and deed; so long as you think, speak and act according to the rules of the man who formed his own ‘Free Church’. Distance from Ireland in this instance does being its compensations and so I post this letter." See here: http://brianjohnspencer.tumblr.com/post/108387020928/jack-kyle-on-ian-paisley-july-1966

The famous rugby international wrote in a letter to the Irish Times in July 1966: "Some time ago a minister from Ireland stated that he would never come back to speak in Ulster because the place was so full of ‘spiritual nightclubs’, places where the ‘religious’ went along to be entertained and have their emotions stirred. Ulster is be-devilled by such religious clubs, where men like Mr Paisley entertain, making feeble and inane jokes, and obviously in some of these ‘night clubs’ stirring up the base emotions and religious intolerance, bigotry and hatred. The spiritual gain to the community resulting from such meetings is nil. Such entertainment always seems to collect its followers. It reminds me of the verses: 'The folk that live in our town,
Their hearts are in their boots
They all go to hell they do,
Because the hooter hoots'." See in full here: http://brianjohnspencer.tumblr.com/post/108387020928/jack-kyle-on-ian-paisley-july-1966

Jack Kyle

Jack Kyle Irish Rugby Legend (1926 - 2014)