Different League – The Derry City Story, review: a plucky underdog story to make grown men misty-eyed

Different League – The Derry City Story (BBC Two) was an uplifting tale set during the Troubles, and that’s not something you get very often. It charted the fall and rise of Derry City FC, a team based in the largest Catholic area of Northern Ireland. When their ground was deemed a no-go zone in the early Seventies – the team bus of visitors Ballymena United was torched – they were banned from playing at home, and soon went out of business.

Unable to gain readmission to the league, a plucky quartet of former players – dubbed the Gang of Four – resolved to get the club back on its feet via alternative means. In a bold move, they applied to the League of Ireland in Dublin. It was, in the words of one player, “something that could cross the border without politics”.

Cue a plucky underdog story. A news report from the time documented the situation in Catholic Derry as the club was getting back on its feet: 14 armed attacks on the security forces, 13 explosions, 80 hijackings, 36 house takeovers for ambushes, 21 petrol bombings and 84 armed robberies, all in the space of a year. But the violence was given light treatment here, in a conscious decision by the film-makers to define this community by something other than the Troubles. “I’ll always remember my mum saying, ‘No religion and no politics, stay clear of both of them.’ And she was right,” said Jim McLaughlin, the manager who led the team back to glory.

The participants were not short on wit. When a bomb threatened to disrupt the biggest game of Derry’s career, against Benfica, management called on local politician Martin McGuinness for help. Said journalist Eamonn McCann: “I think it would generally be accepted that Martin might have had more experience and expertise in that particular area than the average Derry City football fan.”

Grown men were in tears when Derry City won the league, and are still misty-eyed when thinking back on it now. They lost the Benfica game, but it was still a victory. It was a timely reminder that clubs mean nothing without their fans.