Ireland national football team (1882–1950)

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 18th of February 1882, the Ireland national football team made their international debut at Bloomfield Park in Belfast, losing 0-13 to England. That result still stands as England's record win and Ireland's record defeat. The youngest player on the Irish side was Samuel Johnston, who at 15 years and 154 days old became the youngest international debutant the sport had ever recorded.

  One week later, at the Racecourse Ground in Wrexham, Johnston scored Ireland's first international goal against Wales. He was simultaneously the youngest international goalscorer in the history of the game. Ireland still lost that match 1-7.

  Ireland were the fourth international team ever to take the field. For the next sixty-eight years, they competed in the British Home Championship against England, Scotland and Wales. Sometimes they were champions. Often they finished last. And by the end of their run, they were a team caught in the question of what country, exactly, they were representing.

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• 2. Youth and Longevity

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  Shaw Gillespie was only 18 years old when he pulled on the Ireland goalkeeper's jersey on the 27th of February 1886, becoming the youngest international goalkeeper of the 19th century. Olphert Stanfield and W.K. Gibson each debuted at 17. George Gaukrodger also made his debut at 17 and would go on to play county cricket for Worcestershire. In Johnston, Gibson and Gaukrodger, Ireland had three of the four youngest international goalscorers of the entire 19th century.

  Lacking the depth available to England and Scotland, Ireland reached into younger age groups for its players. International careers also stretched longer as a result. The same side that held the record for the youngest players in 19th-century international football also held the record for the oldest.

  Stanfield became the standout of that generation. He accumulated 30 caps for Ireland, making him the most capped international of the 19th century. His best day came on the 7th of February 1891, when he scored four goals in a 7-2 win over Wales. Also on the pitch that day was Jack Reynolds, whose display attracted the interest of West Bromwich Albion, who signed him in March 1891. The arrangement collapsed when Reynolds was discovered to be English.

  On the 3rd of March 1894, at the Solitude Ground in Belfast, Ireland came back from 2-0 down against England to earn a 2-2 draw. Stanfield and W.K. Gibson scored the two goals. Among the England players that day was Reynolds, who had since switched international allegiances. Three years later, Ireland would pioneer an approach to team preparation that no international association had attempted before.

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• 3. Coaching Pioneers

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  On the 20th of February 1897, for the first time in the history of modern football, a national team took the field with a designated coach in charge. Ireland were the team; the coach was Billy Crone. They lost 6-0 to England that day, but a new idea had been put into practice. Hugh McAteer followed as coach in 1898 and 1899; Robert Torrans took the role in 1900. Selection remained a committee decision, but Ireland had established the principle before any other national team.

  In 1899, the IFA also changed who it was permitted to pick. Before then, the national side was drawn exclusively from the Irish League, particularly four Belfast clubs: Cliftonville, Distillery, Glentoran and Linfield. On the 4th of March 1899, McAteer broke from that tradition by including four players based at English clubs. Ireland won that match 1-0 against Wales.

  Three weeks later, on the 25th of March, one of those four England-based players scored. Archie Goodall, aged 34 years and 279 days, found the net in a 1-9 defeat to Scotland. He became the oldest goalscorer at international level in the 19th century. Goodall kept playing for Ireland into his late thirties.

  On the 28th of March 1903, Goodall scored again, now aged 38 years and 283 days, becoming Ireland's oldest-ever international goalscorer. His goal opened a 2-0 win against Wales and helped clinch Ireland's first share of the British Home Championship. Despite losing their opening game in the tournament 0-4 to England, Ireland then beat Scotland for the first time, 2-0 at Celtic Park. The winning side included Jack Kirwan, Billy Scott, Billy McCracken and Robert Milne. The 1903 shared championship was Ireland's first. Eleven years would pass before a new generation of Irish players improved on it.

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• 4. The Championship Year

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  On the 15th of February 1913, Ireland beat England for the first time in their history, winning 2-1 at Windsor Park in Belfast. Val Harris captained the side and Billy Gillespie scored twice. Ireland had waited thirty-one years to achieve that result.

  In 1914, Ireland went further. Gillespie was joined in the squad by Patrick O'Connell and Bill Lacey, among others, and Hugh McAteer returned to coach the team. Ireland beat Wales 2-1 away, with Gillespie scoring twice again. Then came a 3-0 win over England at Ayresome Park in Middlesbrough, with Lacey scoring two of the goals.

  Ireland needed only to avoid defeat against Scotland to take the championship outright. They managed a 1-1 home draw, and the British Home Championship was theirs for the first time as outright winners. The match against Scotland proved to be Ireland's final competitive game until October 1919, when the championship reopened with Ireland at Windsor Park, facing England.

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• 5. The Interwar Years

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  When the British Home Championship resumed in October 1919, Ireland opened at Windsor Park against England with eight debutants in the lineup. Despite losing only one game in the competition, they finished last. The championship-winning side had dispersed, and Ireland never recaptured the form of their 1914 season.

  Billy Gillespie remained the team's most dangerous player through the 1920s. On the 10th of October 1923, alongside Tom Farquharson, Sam Irving and Bobby Irvine, he featured in a 2-1 win over England at Windsor Park. His career total of thirteen goals set the Irish Football Association's goalscoring record, seven of them scored against England. That record stood for nearly eighty years, equalled by Colin Clarke in 1992 and broken by David Healy in 2004.

  On the 10th of October 1927, Ireland beat England 2-0 at Windsor Park, with Elisha Scott in goal. Four months later, on the 25th of February 1928, Scott's goalkeeping proved decisive as Ireland defeated Scotland 1-0. It was Ireland's first win against the Scots in eighteen years and gave them their best championship finish since 1914.

  On the 2nd of February 1930, Joe Bambrick scored six goals as Ireland beat Wales 7-0. Playing on his home club ground, Bambrick set a record that has never been equalled. No other player in the history of the British Home Championship has scored six goals in a single match. The 7-0 result also remains Ireland's record win. For the rest of the decade, Ireland spent most seasons in the bottom half of the table. When the 1938-39 competition ended, they had lost every game. A few months later, official international football was suspended for the second time in the team's history.

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• 6. Two Irelands

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  In 1920, Ireland was partitioned into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Two years later, the south became the Irish Free State. A rival football association, the Football Association of Ireland, had already emerged in Dublin in 1921. In 1923, FIFA recognized it as the governing body of football in the Free State. Through all of this, the IFA kept selecting its national team on an all-Ireland basis. It regularly called up players from both sides of the border.

  Between 1928 and 1946, the IFA was not affiliated to FIFA. For those eighteen years, two teams both called Ireland competed without ever entering the same tournament. At least 39 players represented both associations as dual internationals. Professional players in that era rarely refused the chance to appear internationally, however few games a year were available.

  After the British Home Championship was suspended in 1939, Ireland played an unofficial match against a combined British services team. It included Matt Busby, Stanley Matthews, Tommy Lawton and Stan Mortensen. Ireland lost 4-8. All four of their goals came from one player, Peter Doherty. The match commentator Maurice Edelston described Doherty as almost a one-man team. He added that if Ireland had possessed two players of that quality, he shuddered to think what might have happened.

  When official internationals resumed in 1946, the Football Association of England asked both associations to select only players from within their own jurisdictions. The FAI complied; the IFA did not. Two players appeared in the IFA's 2-7 defeat to England in Belfast on the 28th of September. They then played for the FAI against the same England team in Dublin two days later, in a 0-1 defeat. On the 27th of November, seven players born in the 26 counties appeared in the IFA's 0-0 draw with Scotland. They included Johnny Carey, Peter Farrell and Con Martin. That result helped Ireland finish as runners-up in the 1946-47 British Home Championship.

  The final chapter came during the 1949-50 British Home Championship, which served as a World Cup qualifying group. Ireland hosted the first World Cup qualifier involving a home nation, losing 2-8 to Scotland in Belfast. In the match against Wales at Wrexham, Ireland fielded an all-Ireland team for the last time. Four of that side had been born in the Free State: Tom Aherne, Reg Ryan, Davy Walsh and captain Con Martin. All four had also represented the FAI team in the same World Cup qualifying campaign.

  Jackie Carey was the last player from the Republic of Ireland to sign an undertaking not to play for the IFA. He did so in April 1950. At FIFA's congress in 1953, its Rule 3 was amended, requiring each international team to use the name recognized by its political geography. The IFA was to become Northern Ireland. That designation took effect for FIFA competition in 1954. In the British Home Championship, the IFA continued using the name Ireland until the late 1970s.

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