The origins of the beautiful game in the Premier County
A look into how soccer developed in the hurling stronghold of Tipperary, from the late 1890s to the early 1940s.
1878 is the year which has been credited with the birth of Irish Soccer. Soccer is likely to have been played by soldiers, students and others who may have seen the game in Britain, however, before this there had been no formal club established in Ireland.
In 1878 two Scottish clubs, Caledonians and Queens Park, were invited by J.A McAlery to play a match in Belfast. This was the formal introduction of the game to Ireland. Within the next two years McAlery had founded Cliftonville F.C and also had helped found the Irish Football Association in Belfast 1880. However despite eventually expanding into Dublin the game would take another 20 years to formally establish itself further south of the country, in Tipperary.
Perhaps the stigmatism of the game as a garrison game played by predominately the British army didn’t help the game flourish in such a Catholic and nationalist area as Tipperary. The Irish League during the 1880s and early 1900s was dominated by garrison teams who played against clubs across Ireland. Alan Bairner makes the point that soccer was at a disadvantage due to the fact it was so strongly associated as a game from army garrisons, whereas rugby — which developed form largely an educational background — was rather more accepted. Soccer was undeniably linked with the British military and with such an ill-feeling towards the British Empire, especially in rural Tipperary, it was always going to be a struggle to spread.
In 1897, soccer made an appearance in Tipperary, but like cricket and rugby it was teams of garrison soldiers who played it first. In April 1897, the 58th Field Battery Clonmel and 14th Hussars, Carrick-on-Suir played against each other in Clonmel. However, according to Neal Garnham a soccer game was said take place in Carrick-on-Suir on St. Stephen’s Day in 1896, which would make that to be the first formal game of soccer played in Munster.
Cahir Park AFC is the first soccer club to be founded in Tipperary. It is also Ireland’s oldest junior football club with its first season of soccer commencing in 1910. Soccer itself has roots in the town before this, when during the 1900s a team from Cahir would play the local army battalion. These matches would draw large crowds to the area, including in 1902 when a Cahir team played against the 93rd Battery RFA, with Cahir winning two nil. The following year on St Patrick’s Day a team from Cahir took on the 122nd battery RFA, again drawing a large crowd.
In the early years of the club they played in the Limerick & District League and the North Munster Senior League. The majority of the teams in these leagues were teams from army barracks around Munster such as the 146th Battery RFC, the 3rd Rifle Brigade and the 4th Battery RFC. In 1912 the club reached the Irish Junior Cup final but were defeated, however amends were made in 1913 when the club won the North Munster League and also won the Tyler Club making them the one of the best soccer teams in Munster at the time.
The Army Barracks around Tipperary would continue to play the game of soccer. In 1915, RFA of Cahir played against ASC Clonmel, with all money collected at the gates going towards ‘the poor Poles that had been rendered homeless through the war’. The report claims receipts would have been higher if the match were held on a bank holiday weekend, yet soccer was not the most popular game in the county and the Great War was another topic which controversially divided peoples opinion. Again, the connection between soccer as a British garrison sport was made stronger.
As noted in Cahir Park’s history, up until the formation of the Irish Free State virtually all games were played against military teams. But the teams of Cahir came from all walks of life. On the team that won the Tyler Cup, there was a butcher, a post office clerk, a public house owner and James McNamara. James was a known Gaelic footballer, winning an All-Ireland with Tipperary in 1920 and also played on the Tipperary team involved in Blood Sunday. Despite soccer’s name as a garrison game, Cahir AFC was different, it was open to all and men from all walks of life participated. However soccer would still struggle to make a huge impact.
In 1920s, there was the establishment of the Tipperary League — with only two civilian teams in Cahir Park and Clonmel Comrades FC. Tipperary’s third civilian team would come about with the foundation Tipperary Wanderers. However, only Wanderers and Cahir Park were the teams who represented Tipperary in the national leagues and cups, featuring regularly throughout the next few years.
Wanderers greatest game came against the mighty Shamrock Rovers when they beat the Dublin side 2–0 in the Irish Cup, but the game was forced to a replay after Shamrock Rovers protested against two of the Tipp players, with Wanderers losing in the replay.
Cahir was different from all other teams in Tipperary at the time. As noted by David Toms, they had the backing of local landowner Richard Butler Charteris who loaned out the grounds for the Cahir Park. It’s interesting when one looks at those involved in the club. Firstly, it was supported by a landlord, who would not have been traditionally associated with soccer. And despite the stigmatisms surrounding teh sport, the majority of those involved in Cahir Park were from the working and lower middle class of society, in fact general labourers made up a majority of players. Soccer would not have been considered a game for Catholics, and when one sees that in the pre-war era the president of the club was Reverend Hogg of the Church of Ireland, one would presume that the team would be mostly made up of Protestants or people from the Church of Ireland, but in fact the majority of players in the pre-war era were Catholic.
The town of Cahir broke down the stigma of soccer, uniting people from different religious beliefs and financial classes. Soon, towns like Tipperary and Clonmel followed and the Premier County finally established itself as not just a hurling stronghold, paving way for the likes of Shane Long to do his county proud on the international stage.
