Northern Ireland v Hungary (29/03/2022)

WORDS : MART IN MOORE

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN… Just over 140 years ago – on Saturday 18 February 1882 – Ireland played their first ever international football match, and it was something of a humiliation. They were beaten 13-0 by England in Belfast.

and “stimulate the players to more assiduous practice”. Preparations for the match began in December 1881. The IFA Committee’s first decision was “that the international colours be royal blue jersey and hose and white knickers (the first choice colours were not changed to green until 1931)”. A “beautiful badge” was chosen for the shirts consisting of “an Irish cross, with harp in centre surrounded with a wreath of shamrocks” and “embroidered with golden floss on a blue silk ground”. The committee also decided that eligibility to play for the team should be birth in Ireland or seven years’ residence. The on-pitch preparations for the big day involved a sobering 12-0 defeat of a Belfast and District team by an Ayrshire FA team in January, and the week before the match a ‘Probables’ v ‘Improbables’ trial followed immediately by a practice match for the selected team against a ‘Scotch XI’ made up of Belfast-based Scottish footballers. The Scots won 4-1. Bloomfield, the home of Knock Football Club, was chosen as the venue for the match, with admission prices set at sixpence for men, threepence for schoolboys and ladies free, and arrangements were made with the Belfast and County Down Railway for special trains to be run between Queen’s Quay and Bloomfield on the day of the match. The Bloomfield ground in east Belfast was very basic. It had a pavilion, but no stands or turnstiles. Its precise location is unclear, though we know that the entrance gate was close to the Bloomfield railway station, which means it was somewhere along the Upper Beersbridge Road between Ravenscroft Avenue and the Upper Newtownards Road. This was the only time the ground, which was vacated for development in 1892, was used for an international. The chosen team had a very middle class aspect. Of the 11 players given the honour of representing Ireland in this historic match, nine were professionals or businessmen, including an accountant, a doctor and a future Presbyterian minister.

It’s a scoreline that remains to this day as Northern Ireland’s worst ever result (the Ireland team evolved into Northern Ireland) and England’s best ever result. Football was a young sport in Ireland at the time. It was only in Belfast and parts of Ulster that it had become properly organised through the formation of the Irish Football Association some 15 months previously. The IFA was still very small. In 1882 it only had 13 member clubs. In England, by contrast, the FA was in its 19th year, football had been growing steadily since the 1870s and the international team had 13 matches against Scotland and Wales under their belts. The genesis of the historic first international was in April 1881 when the IFA was invited to attend a conference in Manchester of the “kindred associations throughout the United Kingdom”. The Irish delegate and IFA treasurer, John Sinclair, returned home to Belfast with matches arranged against England and Wales for February of the following season. It was hoped that these matches would promote interest in the relatively new sport

IRISHFA.COM

59