Nations League: 1280 days without a home game - Northern ...
In their latest Nations League fixture Northern Ireland will take on Belarus in Hungary on Saturday, the neutral venue the result of Uefa restrictions on the hosts. Fifty years ago, it was Northern Ireland playing in homes away from home with no international football staged in Belfast between October 1971 and April 1975. BBC Sport NI looks back on the side's nomadic years.
Sammy McIlroy still vividly remembers what it was like to see George Best in the flesh for the first time.
While the two would later become Manchester United and Northern Ireland team-mates, for a 13-year-old to watch the soon-to-be Ballon d'Or winner against Scotland at Windsor Park in October 1967 was "absolutely mesmerising".
"To this day I can still see things George did with the ball," remembers the midfielder who went on to win 88 Northern Ireland caps before managing his country.
"I'll never forget it. The crowd, the atmosphere, it was electric.
"I'd never seen anything like that, a player with the ball tied to his boots. It just made me want to go back home and get the ball out on the street."
It would be a rare privilege soon denied to the people of Northern Ireland.
By the time of McIlroy's own international debut against Spain in a Euro '72 qualifier just five years later, Northern Ireland were the "home" team in a game staged at Hull City's Boothferry Park, an arrangement enabled by Terry Neill being the player-manager of both sides.
The early 1970s provided the bloodiest years of the Troubles, the name given colloquially to the decades-long sectarian conflict in the country and, after a 1-1 draw against the USSR in October 1971, Northern Ireland was deemed unsafe to host international football.
"To be honest, I was devastated it wasn't in Belfast," says McIlroy of the 1-1 draw with Spain, the first of 18 consecutive fixtures played outside of Northern Ireland.
"I was delighted to play, to make my debut for Northern Ireland, it just took the gloss off it that it wasn't in Belfast in front of my home fans. That was very, very sad."
During the following years Northern Ireland would play in front of a small mix of expats and curious locals, using Goodison Park, Highfield Road, Hillsborough and Craven Cottage just to fulfil their World Cup '74 qualifying fixtures, as well as those in the British Home Nations Championship.
Perhaps the most famous of those games came in a 1-1 draw with Eusebio's Portugal in Coventry.
The Benfica star, who had previously played in Belfast when his club side were paired with Glentoran in 1967-68 European Cup, was on the scoresheet that night, netting from the penalty spot to cancel out Martin O'Neill's first international goal.
Such was the striker's fame, that having missed out on swapping jerseys with the night's other goalscorer, O'Neill asked for his shorts instead.
While local fans were denied the opportunity to see one of the world's best footballers in Belfast, for Bryan Hamilton the "great sadness" of the situation was how it forced a divide between supporters and their own homegrown stars.
"Pat Jennings, I'm totally biased, but the best goalkeeper in the world," says the midfielder who won 50 caps between 1968 and 1980 and preceded McIlroy in the Windsor Park dugout.
"George Best, again I'm totally biased, but the best player in the world.
"So many generations in Northern Ireland didn't get to see him play. This is the great sadness of it all. A lot of the kids of that day never got the chance to see him at his peak."
Although he would go on to make a subsequent international comeback, Best had been a star at Manchester United in 1971. By the time of Northern Ireland's return to Belfast, his most recent football had come with Dunstable Town.
The first game back at Windsor Park would come in April of 1975 when, despite the Troubles continuing, Yugoslavia agreed to travel for a Euro '76 qualifier.
When the teams emerged for the 5pm Wednesday evening kick-off, the visitors were given a guard of honour onto the pitch - something McIlroy says "was to say thanks for having the bottle to come to Belfast".
"It was an unbelievable occasion," recalls Hamilton of a game that saw almost 26,000 supporters crammed into Windsor Park.
"From an atmosphere point of view, it was packed. They were hanging on the rafters, climbing up poles, they were on everything."
Yugoslavia had drawn with Brazil at the World Cup the previous year and, as hosts, would take both Germany and the Netherlands to extra-time at Euro '76, but were beaten 1-0 by the side playing in front of their own crowd for a first time in three and a half years.
Hamilton was the one to secure the famous victory, nodding home the winning goal from close range, even if the writing of his name in the record books remains a point of contention with one team-mate.
Allan Hunter, who provided the assist with a looping header across goal, still maintains his own effort was going over the line before his Ipswich colleague applied the finishing touch.
"To this day my great pal says that he scored it," laughs Hamilton, who had also scored the only goal in Northern Ireland's previous win at Windsor, four years prior against Wales in April 1971.
"I tell him to read the papers, look at the pictures. I knew Hunter was going to win the header, I knew where it was going to go. All I had to do was make sure it was going over the line.
"As he always tells me, he took the blows and the bangs for these knockdowns and I took the glory."
The next day's newspapers included the headline 'Happy Days Are Here Again' and later in the same year both England and Wales returned in the Home Nations Championship, although the next season's Scottish fixture was again staged at Hampden Park.
"I'm a proud Ulsterman and I was always very proud to play, captain and manage Northern Ireland. But that game especially so," adds Hamilton.
"I think back to when I was a little boy, watching an international side and how important it was to me. I was just hoping that what we were doing in coming back was giving the kids from the streets of Belfast that same thing."
