while standing on the high vantage point overlooking the Brandywell offered by the City Cemetery in Creggan and parked hired double-decker buses outside the stadium to help them see over the ground's perimeter. The club is known for its community spirit, and the supporters have played a pivotal role in the survival and successes of the club. When debts brought Derry close to extinction in the 2000–01 season, the local community responded en masse to help save the club. During the club's successful 2006 season, club captain, Peter Hutton said: Likewise, former Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, who was the club's president, stated in 1998 of the club's relationship with the community: Support for the club is quite dependent on geography and crosses social boundaries. Fans come from both working class areas, such as the Brandywell area and Bogside, and more affluent regions of the city, like Culmore. The Cityside is seen as the traditional base of the club, especially the Brandywell area, although the Waterside is also home to a smaller number of supporters. The club are supported mainly by Derry's nationalist community. The connection is argued to be rooted mainly in geography, as well as social, cultural and historical circumstances, as opposed to the club or its fans pushing towards the creation of a certain identity. Indeed, prior to 1969, over half of the club's support base came from the sizeable Unionist community that lived in the cityside at the time. The onset of the troubles made the Brandywell's Nationalist location too dangerous to visit and Unionist support fell away to a small minority, in keeping with the rapid Unionist depopulation of the cityside as a whole. The city's wider Protestant community, almost entirely based in the Waterside, is largely apathetic, though some unionists and loyalists see the club as a symbol of Catholicism and nationalism as a result of the sectarian divide in support. Joining the Republic of Ireland's league augmented the perception and, on occasion, Protestant hooligans have thrown missiles at Derry's supporter buses as they journeyed to or returned from games across the border. Minor nationalist elements within the Derry City support-base see football as a means of reinforcing sectarian divides. With the city being a focal point of culture and activity serving the north-west region of Ireland, support stretches beyond the urban border and into the