{"id":692206,"date":"2026-01-13T01:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/692206\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T01:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:17:14","slug":"commonwealth-games-northern-ireland-team-chief-still-seeking-guidance-on-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/692206\/","title":{"rendered":"Commonwealth Games: Northern Ireland team chief still seeking guidance on flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ulster Banner was the flag of the former Government of Northern Ireland from 1953 until it was was abolished in 1973.<\/p>\n

While in the Olympics, athletes from Northern Ireland can choose to compete for Team GB – which uses the Union Flag – or Team Ireland – which uses the Irish tricolour. <\/p>\n

In the Commonwealth Games the Ulster Banner has been used as the flag of the Northern Ireland contingent.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Olympics, the four contingent parts of the UK compete separately at the Commonwealth Games, meaning none is represented by the Union Flag.<\/p>\n

The Union Flag has no official status in Northern Ireland<\/a> nor any other part of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Heatley said the Union Flag would not work at the Commonwealth Games because it did not “uniquely represent” Northern Ireland. <\/p>\n

“It’s recognised that the Ulster Banner holds cultural significance for a large section of one side of community in Northern Ireland and I think we need to be honest about this and say there are people on the other side of community who don’t feel the same about that,” Heatley said. <\/p>\n

He said that “in the absence of a flag that we’re instructed to use by politicians, the only thing that we can do” is use the CGNI logo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ulster Banner was the flag of the former Government of Northern Ireland from 1953 until it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-692206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115885155423834146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}