Introduction to ‘going beyond the ‘garrison game’: new perspectives on association football in Irish history’ §

Abstract

Helena Byrne's article on women's indoor soccer in the 1960s raises questions about the gender imbalance in our understanding of not just football's history in Ireland and not only sport's history in Ireland, but the history of women in Ireland full-stop. A few historians have asserted that folk-football in Ireland was largely in decline by the opening decades of the 1800s. Boxing's Dan Donnelly has also received some attention, but George Best remains the most documented professional footballer from Northern Ireland or the Republic, with the death in 2005 of the former European Footballer of Year being acknowledged through an unofficial state funeral in Belfast. The Gaelic Athletic Association's dominance of sport in Ireland was not as cut and dried as some commentators would have us believe, and there is strong evidence that Gaelic football experienced a decline in that decade, and not just because of an upsurge in interest in soccer with the televising of English football.