The Origins and Development of Football in Ireland: Being a Reprint of R.M. Peter’s “Irish Football Annual” of 1880

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Football, be it Gaelic, rugby or soccer, is unquestionably the most popular team sport in Ireland. Each week thousands play at sports venues throughout the island and many more look on and cheer. The exploits of players and teams at Dublin's Croke Park and Landsdowne Road or Belfast's Windsor Park, Ravenhill and Casement Park have all entered popular myth and legend.

Yet all this sporting success and enthusiasm has developed comparatively recently and from very humble beginnings. Surprisingly, the modern codes of Gaelic, Rugby and Association football in Ireland are little more than a century old. They share common roots in traditional folk games and in the cult of athleticism that gripped the country in the later decades of the nineteenth century.

R.M. Peter's pioneering Irish Football Annual was published in 1880, at a crucial juncture in the development of Irish football in all its forms. Reproduced here, it provides voluminous detail on more than 600 players and 50 clubs of the time: it is a mine of information for the sports enthusiast, the historian and the genealogist alike.

Peter's valuable work is placed in a wider historical perspective by Neal Garnham's fascinating introduction which outlines the development and early growth of all three of Ireland's footballing codes, from their origins until after the First World War. The outcome is an engrossing and entertaining story of the early years of soccer, rugby and Gaelic football in Ireland and their place in the wider world of sport and society.

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19th Century Football

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