The flags were apt symbols of the passions that divide Northern Ireland’s two contending groups: the 1,000,000 Protestants, who fear eventual absorption by the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish ...

But throughout this period, Ireland’s rugby team continued to play under a single flag. In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement helped bring peace to Northern Ireland.

The unfurling of flags and restating of allegiances links back to ancient conflicts and a religious schism that ultimately favoured Protestantism at the expense of Catholicism, the consequences of ...