Linfield are 90 minutes from facing Celtic in a Champions League qualifier. The Belfast club’s chairman says he would encourage his team’s fans to travel – and regrets but understands the Scottish side’s decision not to do the same

“There are actually links between us and Celtic,” says the Linfield chairman, Roy McGivern. “In that they’re celebrating 50 years of the Lisbon Lions and, as most people don’t realise, we got into the quarter-final of the European Cup that same year before losing 3-2 on aggregate to CSKA Sofia, who then lost to Inter Milan, whom Celtic beat in the final. So we could actually have played Celtic in the final that year.”

OK, so calling that a link may seem a little tenuous but let us not quibble about that at a time when nearly all other mentions of Linfield and Celtic emphasise the supposed incompatibility of the two clubs. You know, the Glasgow one with Catholic and Irish nationalist heritage versus the Belfast one with strong Protestant and unionist associations, both with a number of supporters who like to glorify those differences and denounce the other.

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You can bet that since the draw for the qualifying rounds of this season’s Champions League was made last month some police officers in Northern Ireland and Scotland have become secret supporters of San Marino’s La Fiorita, the only team that can prevent a second-round clash between Celtic and Linfield. Thanks to Jordan Stewart’s goal in Belfast last week, Linfield have a 1-0 lead going into Tuesday’s second leg. Chances are, that Linfield-Celtic duel will come to pass.

“The potential second-round tie excites me greatly from a football perspective,” says McGivern, who is all too aware that prophecies of violence took the focus off football as soon as the possibility of the tie emerged. Linfield last week condemned “hysterical articles that have appeared in the press”, in particular an account given to the Daily Record by one former Celtic player, Joe Miller, of the hostility he supposedly encountered when playing against Linfield at Windsor Park for Aberdeen in the 1990s.

“What troubles us most of all,” read a statement from Linfield, “is that Linfield FC has no record of having played Aberdeen at Windsor Park or elsewhere in the entire decade Mr Miller refers to, whether in a friendly fixture, training game or otherwise. In fact, it appears that Linfield have never played against Aberdeen at all throughout our entire history.” Miller subsequently apologised for his mistaken recollections, explaining that “my memory let me down”.

All the same there would be an obvious risk of disorder if Linfield finish the job against La Fiorita and set up a showdown with Celtic. The timing of the tie is inauspicious even if the first leg in Belfast has been provisionally postponed by two days so as not to fall on 12 July, the day of the biggest annual Orange march celebrating victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. “There’s no secret that it causes difficulties for us and for the local authorities in terms of the timing of the game, with it being in the holiday season and the marching season,” says McGivern. “But we’ve had very good cooperation with both Celtic and the PSNI just to make sure that, if we do progress, we can have a tremendous footballing occasion and that’s what we’ll hopefully be talking about.”

Linfield competed regularly against clubs from the Republic of Ireland during the cross-border Setanta Cup between 2005 and 2014 and there was infrequent violence, such as when Shamrock Rovers visited Windsor Park in 2013, but nothing on the same scale of past clashes, such as when Linfield supporters were blamed for rioting that broke out when they travelled south to play Dundalk in the 1979 European Cup and Uefa ordered the club to play their ‘home’ leg in Holland; or, most infamously, in 1948, when Linfield fans invaded the Windsor Park pitch to attack players of Belfast Celtic, leaving the striker Jimmy Jones with a broken leg. Belfast Celtic withdrew from the league shortly afterwards.

The memory of such incidents, the proximity to the marching season and perhaps even the fact that recent elections have suggested renewed polarisation in Northern Irish politics (now dominated by two parties that tend not to be classed as moderate, the DUP and Sinn Féin) have helped convince the Scottish champions that it would be best if they did not take up their ticket allocation for the away leg if they have to play Linfield.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linfield fans before a game against the Dublin club Shelbourne in 2005. ‘We have made great strides forward,’ says the chairman, Roy McGivern. ‘We have a young and enthusiastic band of supporters who now sing traditional Linfield songs.’ Photograph: Haydn West/PA

“We totally understand the approach Celtic have taken and whilst we may regret it, it’s totally a matter for their club to deal with,” says McGivern, who points to efforts his club have made to eradicate sectarianism in recent years. Linfield, for instance, have clamped down on offensive chanting and condemned unequivocally the miscreants who hijacked the PA system at Windsor Park to play sectarianism songs during the Belfast derby against Glentoran last Boxing Day. McGivern says a new generation of fans makes such occurrences increasingly uncommon, just as the days are long gone when a Catholic player in a Linfield jersey was practically unheard of.

“We have made great strides forward,” he says. “We have a young and enthusiastic band of supporters who now sing traditional Linfield songs and we encourage that greatly. We have players throughout the club, from the academy to the first team, who come from both sides of the community. That’s something we’re keen to promote, that Linfield represents all traditions of Northern Ireland and we want the very best players playing for our club and we want people from all sections of the community to support us.

“Playing football in Northern Ireland was one of the things that brought normality to the country over 30 years of civil strife. Football carried on normally in the most difficult of circumstances. But we’re a product of our society and we’re still living in a divided society, albeit this time a more peaceful one. People at clubs have done their best to try to manage this situation. We have very close relations with all the other clubs in the league. We work together.”

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Linfield became champions amid evidence of progress. In April they travelled across Belfast for a title decider against Cliftonville, a club whose support traditionally comes from the city’s nationalist community (which is why there was no “hysteria” when Celtic met Cliftonville in the Champions League four years ago). In the past it was considered too dangerous for Linfield fans to travel en masse to Cliftonville’s ground – the wonderfully named Solitude – so all matches between the clubs were staged at Windsor Park. But such precautions are now considered unnecessary, so thousands of Linfield fans trekked to Solitude to witness their team win 3-1 to clinch the title, finishing two points clear of another Belfast club, Crusaders. “[Linfield and Cliftonville] worked really closely together and the day went off totally peacefully,” says McGivern.

The sporting significance of that result was deep. It was Linfield’s first league title for five years (quite a drought by the standards of a club that had won it 51 times previously) and was the first major honour under David Healy, the former Northern Ireland, Manchester United, Leeds, Preston and Rangers striker who began a career in management when appointed by the club in October 2015. “Local media would accuse us of only going for David because he was a big name but when we interviewed him we were really impressed,” says McGivern. “There’s a determination about David that maybe didn’t come across in the interviews he did as a player but he’s a very determined man who only wants to bring success to the club and he’s shown that over the past few months.”

Success did not come immediately for Healy and McGivern identifies November’s draw with Glenavon as a turning point. Linfield were 2-0 down and reduced to nine men by a pair of red cards but they fought back for a 2-2 draw. “That was the first time you thought that this team has something about them and David has put his mark on them,” says McGivern. “Then we chased down the nine-point deficit that Crusaders held over us to win the league on the last day of the season. David and the players have to take the credit for battling to the end and showing the traditional Linfield fighting spirit.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linfield’s manager, David Healy. The former Northern Ireland striker is ‘a very determined man who only wants to bring success’, says his chairman. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

That triumph thwarted Crusaders’ hopes of claiming the title for a third year in a row. “That was very important because a third year in the Champions League would have given them the chance to really push on and maybe become dominant,” says McGivern. Participation in the Champions League can be transformative for Irish League clubs, all of whom are part-time. “Our wage budget for the whole year is less than half a million pounds and we would get more than that just for getting through the first round this year,” says McGivern. “Then obviously you could add in whatever else you might make financially from a big game against Celtic,” he continues. “So obviously that’s huge for us and could put us in a very strong position.”

“When we had a really good spell back in the early 2000s we had about seven professionals, mostly young, and the club took a decision not to pursue that policy. I’ve just taken over as chairman in January and I think the board would be fairly ambitious and, if we can get a few years of Champions League football and put the money back into the club, I can see us trying to move to the next level and get back to having full-time players. Look at the success that the likes of Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk have had in recent years, getting into the group stages of European competition. That’s what we need to be aiming for.”

Ambitious though McGivern is, he does not expect Linfield to make the group stages this year. “If we got to play Celtic, then hopefully we’d put up a very good performance at home and Celtic would certainly know they were in a game,” he says. “I’m not saying we’ll beat them. As for the away leg, no Scottish team beat them at Celtic Park last season, so you wouldn’t be going there under the illusion that you’re going to win. But in football you never know.”

One thing is for sure: if Linfield get there, they would like to bring their fans. “We’ve already informed Celtic that we’ll be taking up our allocation of tickets if we get through. This would be such a great occasions for the whole club that I certainly wouldn’t want to be going to Glasgow without supporters.”