Irish Football – A Sine Wave Through Time

Michael Howley

24th December 2024 | 1:30 PM

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Ireland, like many nations, possesses an incredibly strong appetite for sport. Consistently medaling in the olympics,being ranked among the best rugby teams in the word, producing countless professional combat athletes competing at the highest levels and being the home of the GAA which is a totally unique sport to Ireland, it is not a stretch to say that Ireland is truly a hotbed of sport. 

If we take this to be true though, a question is raised. Why is one of the most popular sports in Ireland done at such a poor level throughout the country? This of course being association football/soccer. Often called soccer in Ireland to differentiate from the equally if not more popular Gaelic football, there are well over 1000 association football clubs registered in the country with most studies and estimates placing the number of active players at an informal as well as professional level well above the 300,000 mark. Alongside the sheer number of players involved, football remains one of the most watched sports in the country with massive amounts of people supporting an English Premier League team. 

Yet despite this massive interest in the game, Ireland have never seemed to deliver consistent results. Currently ranked 62 in the Fifa World rankings nestled in between Jamaica and Burkina Faso at time of writing, Ireland is clearly not anywhere close to the elite in terms of footballing ability. A bright period in the 1990s saw the “Boys in Green” reach a World Cup Quarter final yet they have not been close to replicating this since. Not qualifying for a World Cup since 2002 and only qualifying for 2 of the last 9 European Championships show how drastic the fall from grace has been. This series of articles will aim to examine the history of football in Ireland and identify some of the key issues which have hampered on field results. 

Artwork by Charbak Dipta

History of Football in Ireland 

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