Soccer and Society in Dublin: A History of Association Football in Ireland’s Capital

by Conor Curran

This book is the first full-length assessment of the history of soccer in Dublin and the game’s role within society in the city. It examines the sport's growth there from the late 1800s to the early twenty-first century. It discusses its belated initial development while exploring the origins of clubs, competitions, and venues. It also assesses the growth of underage structures and discusses the significance of links with Britain and further afield. As well as tracing the movement of players at home and abroad, it highlights the tensions between organizers of soccer and other sporting codes in Dublin. Utilizing interviews with players, managers, and supporters, as well as drawing on archival material, it also looks at the importance of soccer within the lives of Dublin’s residents. In doing so, it sets the game’s history there within the context of other parts of Ireland and within wider developments in international cities.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published March 24, 2023

Reviews

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conor Curran is to be commended for the evidently monumental level of research that he has poured into this study of the development of soccer in Dublin. The attention to detail in “Soccer and Society in Dublin” is hugely impressive as Curran - the TCD researcher and historian – traces the roots of the sport in the capital back to the embryonic clubs of the late nineteenth century (although, as Curran notes, soccer was slower to take root in Dublin that it did in Belfast or the industrial cities of Britain). This book goes on to demonstrate how Irish football gradually developed into a mass spectator sport, but with its growth consistently checked by competition from the GAA, suspicion from the all-powerful Catholic hierarchy, and indifference from central Government. This opposition to soccer is perhaps best encapsulated by the ’ban on foreign games’ represented by the GAA’s Rule 27 prohibiting their players from participating in any other form of football.

Some of the most compelling sections of “Soccer and Society in Dublin” detail the Dublin-based footballers who enlisted in the British Army during World War I … and those who later fought the same British during the War of Independence (in some cases, they were the very same players). Curran also has an admirable focus on the path of the women’s game in Dublin over the last century, which cannot have been an easy field to investigate.

This depth of research is both a strength of “Soccer and Society in Dublin”, and its weakness. This is a dense read and, as names of long-defunct clubs and competitions fly past the reader’s head, one can occasionally feel that readability is being sacrificed for comprehensiveness. The book could possibly have leaned on more anecdotes and personal reminiscences. The later sections of “Soccer and Society …” include some very insightful interviews with former League of Ireland players – where they discuss difficulties like balancing their sport with having full-time careers, and having to deal with injuries and retirement in a league where working conditions have been notoriously poor. These interviews are fascinating, and the earlier parts of the book would have been more accessible had they included such dialogues.

Nonetheless, if you any more than a passing interest in the history of sport of Dublin, Conor Curran’s “Soccer and Society …” is an indispensable reference guide to the scene. And, if only to reflect my own twin biases, an extra ‘star’ is merited for the focus on my beloved Bohemian Football Club (not least for the book cover that depicts Bohs’ team of the 1920s), and also for recognising that Everton were the first English side to have a supporters club established in Ireland.