The Irish footballer James McClean has released what now seems to be his annual statement explaining why he won’t be wearing a special jersey displaying the poppy when his team takes to the field this Remembrance weekend. Cue the usual volley of criticism and abuse that is directed at anyone who exercises their right in the way that McClean has done. I find it distinctly unsettling.

Let me explain. I always wear a poppy. Not, admittedly, from the day of the launch of the annual poppy appeal – which, in the spirit of this age of commercialism, seems to take place earlier with each passing year – but certainly in the few days leading up to Remembrance Sunday. I don’t consider myself more virtuous than someone who doesn’t wear one. For those of us who do so, it is usually just a simple, understated act that allows us, for a short period, to open the door to that dead world of the past and commemorate the sacrifice of our forefathers.

For someone such as McClean, however, who grew up on the Creggan estate in Derry, the poppy symbolises something very different, and it is idle to argue otherwise. The mere mention of that city should be enough to make people appreciate why McClean would demur at any suggestion that he might display a symbol linked inextricably to British militarism. I doubt that any of us, had we, like McClean, been raised a Roman Catholic in that place, would see it differently.