'Where you really from?' - Race and identity in Northern Irish football

Rosie Zubier represented Northern Ireland at youth level for more than six years. Not once did she feel like part of the team.

It was a sense of alienation that had nothing to do with poor relations with her team-mates. In fact comradery was — as it so often is in sport — the antidote.

Far more often than not Zubier was the only mixed race player in her team. It was not something ever discussed in depth with her fellow players, not through avoidance but more a shared desire to spend their time discussing tactics or indeed any form of «complete nonsense» that tends to dominate changing rooms.

But on the pitch when representing a country of which, per the 2011 census, 98.2% of the population is white, Zubier became the subject of scrutiny.

«Whenever we were in Florida a couple of other teams couldn't believe I was Northern Irish, they thought I was wearing the wrong kit,» recalls the 18-year-old.

«It happened whenever I was playing in Euro qualifiers in Slovenia and in Edinburgh where people were like 'there's absolutely no way you're Northern Irish'.»

Born in Belfast to a Northern Irish mother and a Sudanese father who moved to the west of the city as a child, everyday life in an overwhelmingly white part of the world has seen Zubier's national identity called into question on an almost daily basis.

At its best sport is seen to offer a safe haven from the difficult realities of life; a characteristic cherished by sport lovers across the world — but for Zubier it was simply not the case. Representing Northern Ireland on an international stage, her race was only placed further into the spotlight.

«It makes you feel as though you don't really belong anywhere almost,» she says.

«I think if I went to Sudan people would go 'oh you're