Footballer James McClean has spoken of learning to make petrol bombs and taking part in rioting when growing up in Londonderry’s Creggan estate.
The Wrexham FC winger, who has more than 100 caps for the Republic of Ireland, said he knew how to make petrol bombs from “the age of 11,12, 13 and knew how to throw them, and you would”.
“There would be just riots non-stop here and you’d be involved in the riots yourself,” he said.
McClean, who has played for Derry City, Sunderland, West Bromwich Albion and Wigan was speaking during an episode of Virgin Media’s Living with Lucy, which aired on Sunday night.
The 36-year-old footballer told host Lucy Kennedy that “times have moved on.”
He also told the presenter how his family feared he would be shot while playing an international game after he first refused to wear a poppy on his shirt in 2012.
“I was getting death threats, it was getting into that,” McClean said.
“People were saying ‘he should be shot’… I was getting bullets in the post, bullets sent to the club.”
On a night he was due to play for Ireland, his then club Sunderland, McClean said, “had received threats that I was basically going to be shot”.
“The game was on TV. I was going to be shot, this and that.”
McClean said it was a difficult time for his wife Erin, who at the time was at home as the game was about to be played.
“She’s back home in Newcastle, where she’s panicking.
“And obviously we were playing the game, Erin she’s watching the game, she’s panicking, she’s thinking he’s going to be shot on TV.”
Poppy decision
McClean has refused to wear a poppy throughout his career.
In 2015, when playing for West Bromwich Albion, McClean said in the matchday programme, he would “wear it every day of the year” if it only represented those who died in World War One and World War Two.
However, he said the poppy represented all the conflicts the UK had been involved in, and because “of the history where I come from in Derry, I cannot wear something that represents that”.
In 1972, 13 people were shot dead and at least 15 others injured when members of the Army’s Parachute Regiment opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Derry, on a day that became known as Bloody Sunday.
McClean told Ms Kennedy, during a visit to the Creggan estate where the footballer grew up, that Bloody Sunday’s significance was central to his decision not to wear a poppy.
“Six or seven people from the Creggan estate died on Bloody Sunday that day,” he said.
“So for me to wear a poppy in support of the people who carried out those atrocities… it frustrates me how people don’t, can’t see that… how there is even a debate of why I should wear a poppy,” he said.
McClean added: “Home is home, you don’t forget where you grew up… I am going to come back here one day, who am I to betray the people who basically raised me?”
He told Sunday night’s programme that decision and the subsequent abuse and threats, had affected his wife and mum over the years, adding it would have been easy to say he would have worn one.
“I stayed true to myself,” he said.
McClean said despite playing at the highest level – including a century of international caps – he is destined to be known for his decision not to wear a poppy.
It is an issue, he said, that “just doesn’t go away”.
“I have played in two major championships but I am known as somebody who doesn’t wear a poppy rather than what I have achieved in my career,” McClean said.
He also told the programme a car crash earlier this year while driving to work had been a “wake-up call” while a diagnosis of autism at the age of 34 had given him “a better understanding of why sometimes I do what I do”.
