Early association football in Ireland: Embryonic diffusion outside Ulster, 1877–1882

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship has revised the traditional account of the origins of association football in Ireland, pointing to previously unacknowledged processes of diffusion independent of the developments in Ulster that were ultimately successful in establishing the code as a formally organised sport. This article completes this picture by presenting further evidence of early association football activity outside Ulster. It examines this activity in each of the provinces of Leinster, Munster and Connacht and analyses the types of teams that were involved. It concludes that the economic and social character of Ireland outside Ulster – in particular the lack of leisure time among the non-industrial working classes, combined with the earlier diffusion of rugby football to those classes who did enjoy leisure time, and the unwillingness of organisers to utilise Sundays – militated against the mass uptake of the code at this time.

KEYWORDS:

• Association football
• soccer
• Ireland
• origins

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Pat Bracken for supplying primary-source material for Tipperary matches and to his colleague Jane Bulfin for searching the Clonmel Chronicle archive. I would also like to thank Professor Tony Collins for advice in relation to the identification of the football codes described in some early match reports and for patiently answering further queries. Finally, I also thank Michael Kielty, who brought to my attention reports of the Tullamore-v.-Geashill match, which was the genesis of this article, and the Cusack’s Academy match.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Martin Moore, ‘The Origins of Association Football in Ireland, 1875–1880: A Reappraisal’, Sport in History 37 (2017): 505–28.

2 Moore, ‘Origins’, 521.

3 Sources for Table 1: Belfast News-Letter; Clonmel Chronicle; Cork Constitution; Derry Journal; Dublin Daily Express; Freeman’s Journal; Tom Hunt, Sport and Society in Victorian Ireland: The Case of Westmeath (Cork: Cork University Press, 2007), 181; Londonderry Sentinel; Midland Counties Advertiser; Northern Whig; Irish Football Annual, ed. R.M. Peter (Dublin: Dublin Steam Printing Company, 1880); reprinted in The Origins and Development of Football in Ireland being a reprint of R.M. Peter’s Irish Football Annual of 1880, ed. Neal Garnham (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1999); Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette; Sligo Independent; Tyrone Constitution; Waterford Standard. Note that, even when described in the press as ‘association rules’, some fixtures may have contained elements of improvisation, or compromises with other football rules. Inevitably, in some cases, judgment has been exercised, based on context and descriptions of play, in determining which matches to include in the analysis. Not included in the analysis are two matches played at Banagher, King’s County, in October and November 1876 between Cuba College and a local team despite the latter being recorded as played under the rules ‘of the Football Association and not Rugby’ (Midland Counties Advertiser, 26 October 1876, 9 November 1876). This decision was made in consultation with Professor Tony Collins (email to the author, 17 April 2020), and was based on the description of the play, which accorded strongly with rugby rules.

4 Sligo Independent, 10 March 1883, 31 March 1883.

5 King’s County was renamed County Offaly in 1920.

6 Midland Counties Advertiser, 13 December 1877, 20 December 1877; Freeman’s Journal, 17 December 1877, 28 December 1877.

7 Brendan Cullen, A Short History of Clongowes Wood College (n.p.: Brendan Cullen, 2011), cited in Clongowes Wood College, ‘Clongowes History’, https://clongowes.net/about-clongowes/history/ (accessed 28 October 2020); Freeman’s Journal, 24 October 1879.

8 Freeman’s Journal, 8 March 1879.

9 Midland Counties Advertiser, 20 February 1879, 13 March 1879; Peter, Irish Football Annual, 70. St Stanislaus’ College was listed as both a rugby and association club (69, 163), although there is no press record of the school every playing the former code.

10 Hunt, Sport and Society, 110, 79.

11 Charles Mosley, ed., Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th ed., 3 vols. (Wilmington, DE: Burke’s Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd., 2003), cited in Darryl Lundy, The Peerage, s.v. ‘Rev. Sir Algernon Coote, 11th Bt’, http://www.thepeerage.com/p25249.htm (accessed 13 June 2020), s.v. ‘Sir Charles Henry Coote, 9th Bt’, http://www.thepeerage.com/p25243.htm (accessed 13 June 2020). Orlando’s father succeeded to the baronetage in 1895.

12 The Standard, 17 March 1855; Mosley, Burke’s Peerage, cited in Darryl Lundy, The Peerage, s.v. ‘Rev. Sir Algernon Coote, 11th Bt’, http://www.thepeerage.com/p25249.htm (accessed 13 June 2020).

13 The Standard, 17 November 1874; Athletic News, 13 November 1875; Sporting Life, 1 March 1876; Hunt, Sport and Society, 171.

14 Sussex Advertiser, 2 January 1877; Kent & Sussex Courier, 12 January 1877.

15 Leinster Reporter, 6 November 1879; Dublin Evening Mail, 21 May 1877; Cork Constitution, 22 May 1877.

16 Midland Counties Advertiser, 25 September 1879, 23 December 1880, 10 March 1881, 7 April 1881.

17 Irish Times, 1 December 1881, 24 May 1882; Neal Garnham, Association Football and Society in Pre-Partition Ireland (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2004), 47; Hunt, Sport and Society, 171; Midland Counties Advertiser, 5 March 1885.

18 Hunt, Sport and Society, 172, 171.

19 Freeman’s Journal, 28 December 1877.

20 Goodbody, ‘Our Heritage’, https://www.goodbody.ie/our-heritage.html (accessed 14 June 2020); Midland Counties Advertiser, 26 April 1883, 3 May 1883.

21 Midland Counties Advertiser, 12 July 1883, 11 November 1879, 24 June 1880, 17 March 1881, 12 May 1881, 30 December 1880.

22 Midland Counties Advertiser, 7 October 1880.

23 ‘James Lyle Stirling’, http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jenkinson/genealogy/bloom/2160.htm (accessed 5 September 2020); 1911 Census Return for 1 Glenageary Road (Kingstown, Dublin) (accessed via the National Archives of Ireland, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000246784/, on 16 August 2020).

24 Thirty-one surnames were identified. The 1901 Census (accessed via the National Archives of Ireland, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/, on 14 June 2020) entries for King’s County were searched and twenty-one of the names were found. Of those, six belonged exclusively to Roman Catholics, and six exclusively to Protestants (four of which were exclusively Church of Ireland). The holders of a further six names were very largely majority Catholic. The remaining three names were held by both Catholics and Protestants, but not by a large majority of either. (The records of earlier Censuses are destroyed.)

25 8 November 1883.

26 Midland Tribune, 27 January 1887, 5 April 1888.

27 7 July 1887; Midland Counties Advertiser, 26 April 1888.

28 Midland Tribune, 31 May 1888; Sport, 1 September 1888.

29 Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1877; Ciaran O’Neill, Catholics of Consequence: Transnational Education, Social Mobility, and the Irish Catholic Elite, 1850–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 30.

30 Freeman’s Journal, 9 September 1878.

31 Francis Finegan, ‘Tullabeg (Rahan), 1818–1968’ in the Jesuit Year Book 1969 (Society of Jesus, 1969), 5–24, reproduced as ‘Jesuits of Tullabeg’, http://www.rahanparish.ie/jesuits_of_tullabeg.html (accessed 11 June 2020).

32 Finegan, ‘Tullabeg (Rahan)’; Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1877.

33 Senia Pašeta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Elite, 1879–1922 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), 40, 41–2.

34 Paul Rouse, Sport and Ireland: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 190; Northern Whig, 22 October 1879.

35 Finegan, ‘Tullabeg (Rahan)’.

36 Midland Counties Advertiser, 10 March 1881; Freeman’s Journal, 4 April 1879, 24 April 1879.

37 Freeman’s Journal, 24 April 1879; Midland Counties Advertiser, 10 March 1881, 7 April 1881.

38 Hunt, Sport and Society, 181.

39 Dublin Evening Mail, 29 May 1878; Freeman’s Journal, 16 October 1878.

40 Dublin Daily Express, 4 March 1878; Freeman’s Journal, 16 October 1878.

41 Dublin Daily Express, 28 October 1878.

42 Dublin Daily Express, 5 November 1878; Freeman’s Journal, 21 November 1878.

43 Dublin Evening Mail, 10 September 1878; Weekly Irish Times, 27 May 1876.

44 Freeman’s Journal, 27 March 1876; Irish Times, 14 December 1876.

45 Dublin Daily Express, 26 February 1878.

46 Dublin Daily Express, 28 October 1878.

47 Freeman’s Journal, 13 February 1879.

48 Freeman’s Journal, 18 October 1878, 28 September 1881. I am indebted to Michael Kielty for bringing these matches to my attention.

49 James Quinn, ‘Cusack, Michael’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a2346 (accessed 25 October 2020).

50 Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 167.

51 Marcus de Búrca, Michael Cusack and the GAA (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1989), 37–8, 42, 48.

52 Ibid., 42.

53 Ibid., 33.

54 Freeman’s Journal, 12 November 1879.

55 Freeman’s Journal, 14 October 1879.

56 Dublin Daily Express, 8 October 1878.

57 Freeman’s Journal, 20 February 1879; Waterford Standard, 5 April 1879.

58 Waterford Standard, 7 September 1878, 26 March 1879, 28 May 1879.

59 Irish Architectural Archive, ‘Duffin, William Edmund L’Estrange’, Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720–1940, https://www.dia.ie/architects/view/1674/DUFFIN%2C+WILLIAM+EDMUND+L'ESTRANGE (accessed 19 June 2020); Waterford Standard, 7 May 1879, 5 June 1878, 5 November 1879, 13 February 1878.

60 Waterford Standard, 12 April 1879.

61 Ibid.

62 Waterford Standard, 9 September 1879, 21 August 1880.

63 Pat Bracken, The Growth and Development of Sport in County Tipperary, 1840–1880 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2018), 215–16.

64 Bracken, Sport in County Tipperary, 215.

65 Clonmel Chronicle, 26 November 1879.

66 Clonmel Chronicle, 1 May 1880.

67 Carrick-on-Suir Amateur Athletic Cricket and Football Club minute book, entry for 8 August 1879 (photocopy in Tipperary Studies, Source Library, Thurles, County Tipperary) (provided by Pat Bracken); Freeman’s Journal, 18 November 1879.

68 Séamus Ó Riain, Maurice Davin (1842–1927): First President of the GAA (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1994), 35.

69 Bracken, Sport in County Tipperary, 155, 181.

70 Freeman’s Journal, 7 November 1879.

71 Paul Rouse, ‘Davin, Maurice’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do;jsessionid=850BE67E7E56768B217BAD2E37CE6EBC?articleId=a2428 (accessed 20 June 2020); Frank Zarnowski, All-Around Men: Heroes of a Forgotten Sport (Larnham: The Scarecrow Press, 2005), 107.

72 Clonmel Chronicle, 1 May 1880.

73 Clonmel Chronicle, 10 March 1880.

74 David Toms, Soccer in Munster: A Social History, 1877–1937 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2015), 1; Moore, ‘Origins’, 509.

75 Cork Constitution, 1 August 1872, 20 April 1877, 27 July 1872, 9 January 1877.

76 Cork Constitution, 13 April 1877, 3 August 1876.

77 Northern Whig, 8 November 1880; Dublin Daily Express, 25 February 1881.

78 Bracken, Sport in County Tipperary, 216.

79 Paul I. Gunning, ‘Association Football in the Shamrock Shire’s Hy Brasil: The “Socker” Code in Connacht, 1879–1906’, Soccer & Society (2016) (doi:10.1080/14660970.2016.1230346). Note that Gunning refers to association football matches played by the Marist Brothers School (by 1880) and Lissadell (in February 1882), but the author was unable to find records of these matches and consequently they are not included in Table 4.

80 Gunning, ‘“Socker” Code in Connacht’, 11, 3; Sligo Independent, 29 January 1876.

81 Gunning, ‘“Socker” Code in Connacht’, 3.

82 Sligo Independent, 3 January 1880, 29 March 1879, 11 October 1879, 8 November 1879.

83 Sligo Independent, 12 April 1879.

84 Sligo Independent, 13 November 1880.

85 Sligo Independent, 23 October 1880.

86 Sligo Independent, 26 November 1881, 24 December 1881, 14 January 1882, 10 February 1882.

87 Sligo Independent, 30 December 1882.

88 Gunning, ‘“Socker” Code in Connacht’, 11; Sligo Independent, 14 October 1882.

89 Sligo Independent, 10 March 1883, 31 March 1883.

90 Northern Whig, 5 May 1879; Belfast Evening Telegraph, 7 August 1880.

91 The Football Association, ‘The Emirates FA Cup: Past Results’ (pages for 1875–76, 1876–77 and 1877–78), https://www.thefa.com/competitions/thefacup/results-archive (accessed 25 June 2020); Norwood News, 27 November 1875.

92 Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 18 December 1880, 12 June 1880, 1 January 1881, 18 December 1880.

93 Moore, ‘Origins’, 519.

94 Sligo Independent, 11 October 1879.

95 Northern Whig, 4 April 1879.

96 25 September 1879.

97 Carrick-on-Suir AACFC minute book, entry for 8 August 1879.

98 Pat Davin, Recollections of a Veteran Irish Athlete: The Memoirs of Pat Davin, World’s All-round Athletic Champion (Dublin: Juverna Press, 1938), 100.

99 For sources, see Table 1.

100 Definitions of types of team are as follows. Military team. A club or team affiliated to or representing an army regiment or unit. (The total number of military teams, and consequently the grand total, is lower than the aggregate of each provincial total because some military teams played matches in more than one province.) Association football club. A team belonging to a club formed for the purpose of playing association football or to an existing football club that adopted association rules, and which was organised on at least a semi-permanent basis (but excluding association football clubs affiliated to schools or the military). Second and third elevens are recorded as separate teams. School team. A club or team affiliated to or representing an educational institution (excluding ‘other sports’ clubs affiliated to educational institutions). Ad hoc team. A scratch team or a team formed to play a particular match or matches. Other sports club. A club formed to play a sport or code of football other than association football, or a team comprising players from such clubs. The other types are: Teams from outside Ireland; select teams (Irish teams comprising players selected from different association football clubs); and occupational and social teams (teams representing members of a particular occupation or social club).

101 The aggregate number of fixtures by type of team is greater than the total number of fixtures because of fixtures involving more than one type of team.

102 Londonderry Sentinel, 13 December 1881; Belfast News-Letter, 17 January 1882.

103 Garnham, Association Football, 25–6.

104 Garnham, Association Football, 25–6; Ciarán Priestley, The Enduring Legacy of an Idle Youth, 2nd ed. (Dublin: Enduring Legacy Press, 2020), 9.

105 Garnham, Association Football, 26.

106 Peter, Irish Football Annual, 68–70.

107 O’Neill, Catholics of Consequence, 53; Garnham, Association Football, 67–8.

108 Garnham, Association Football, 67; Colm Hickey, ‘The Evolution of Athleticism in Elite Irish Schools 1878–1914. Beyond the Cronin/Finn Debate’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 30 (2013): 1400. The pupils at Clongowes voted to abandon association football in 1907, but it seems that there had been earlier attempts by the school management to discourage the code: O’Neill (Catholics of Consequence, 53) notes a pupil’s complaint in 1895 about the Jesuit fathers taking down the soccer posts.

109 In Table 2, Tullamore has been classified as an ‘ad hoc team’ in 1877–78 and 1878–79 and an ‘association football club’ from 1879–80 on.

110 Moore, ‘Origins’, 517–8.

111 See Tony Collins, How Football Began: A Global History of How the World’s Football Codes Were Born (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), chapter 7.

112 Sources for Table 3: Belfast News-Letter; Derry Journal; Londonderry Sentinel; Northern Whig; Peter, Irish Football Annual; Tyrone Constitution. ‘Belfast and district’ is defined as within six miles of Belfast town centre.

113 Association Football, 11.

114 Collins in How Football Began (40–1), discusses the initial desire of football administrators in England to keep the sport restricted to their own class, an attitude that was likely to have been shared by rugby football administrators in Ireland at this time.

115 Moore, ‘Origins’, 518–9.

116 Garnham, Association Football, 16; Moore, ‘Origins’, 521.

117 Northern Whig, 13 February 1882.

118 Paul Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 84, 115–16; Paul Rouse, ‘The Sporting World and the Human Heart: Ireland, 1880–1930’, Irish Studies Review, 27 (2019), 31.

119 Londonderry Sentinel, 8 November 1881. The North West FA was formed in 1886 as the County Derry Football Association.

120 Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 119; Bracken, Sport in County Tipperary, 219, 192; Thomas Hayes, ‘From ludicrous to logical: the transformation of sport in North Munster, 1850–1890’ (PhD thesis, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 2009), 152, available at https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2019 (accessed 8 July 2020).

121 Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 181; Liam O’Callaghan, Rugby in Munster: A Social and Cultural History (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011), 80.

122 Neil Tranter, Sport, Economy and Society in Britain, 1750–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 26.

123 Belfast News-Letter, 12 October 1885.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Moore

Martin Moore is an Independent Scholar, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.