Soccer In Ireland Research Articles

Where are we now? A review of research on the history of women's soccer in Ireland

ABSTRACTIt is a common fact that women's sport and leisure history, especially in male dominated spheres, and more specifically football, have been ignored by many academics. However, in recent years there have been major developments in digital technology that have changed the nature of the type of research that can be done. Access to tools to facilitate field research are relatively cheap and with the high volume of digitisation projects that have taken place over the last few years as well as the increasing number of born digital resources that have been published, there are new opportunities. In relation to women's soccer in Ireland, this paper asks the question – where are we now? The argument will review the current literature on this subject and outline potential approaches for future research.

The development of schoolboy coaching structures for association football in Ireland, 1945–1995

This article offers a comparison in progress in developing coaching structures for schoolboys’ soccer in Ireland in the period from the end of the Second World War until 1995. It will be shown that in Northern Ireland, the Belfast-based Irish Football Association’s implementation of coaching courses was at a more advanced level in the decades immediately following the war, while the Dublin-centred Football Association of Ireland was hindered by a lack of facilities and funds for most of the twentieth century. In Northern Ireland, links between soccer organizers and governing bodies for physical recreation were stronger, and the IFA had begun to develop a coherent structure for the qualification of coaches by the early 1950s. This contrasted greatly to the structures put in place by the FAI and it was not until the Jack Charlton era (1986–1995) that they were able to implement a more comprehensive nationwide system.

Testing the uncertainty outcome hypothesis using data from second tier soccer in Ireland

ABSTRACTThis study estimates a demand relationship for second tier soccer in Ireland to test the uncertainty outcome hypothesis (UOH). Using data from three recent playing seasons, the UOH is found to be upheld. In addition, well-determined effects for fixture quality, recent team performance and travel distance between the competing teams’ stadia are also obtained.

The Relative Age Effect and Under-21 Irish Association Football: A Natural Experiment & Policy Recommendations

This paper considers a relative age effect in association football (soccer) for Republic of Ireland under twenty-one international footballers over two intervals: from November 1981 to November 1994 and from September 2007 to May 2013. As the registration date for organised youth soccer in Ireland differed between both periods, these intervals provide scope for a natural experiment to test for a shifting relative age effect. The paper confirms the existence of a relative age effect with a selection bias toward players born in the earlier months of the registration year for both intervals. Policy recommendations aimed at reducing the impact of relative age effects are discussed and the Irish case is proposed as a benchmark to consider strategies to minimise relative age effects.

Transferring national allegiance: cultural affinity or flag of convenience?

In international sport in recent years there has been a growing tendency for sportspeople to represent a country other than the one in which they were born. Most international sporting bodies allow people to represent either the country of their birth or one to which they have an attachment through ethnicity, residency or marriage. This article explores the senses of national identity and belonging felt by sportspeople competing for a country other than the one in which they were born and grew up. It does so through a focus on the case of the Republic of Ireland soccer team since the 1980s. It examines perceptions of national identity amongst the so-called ‘Anglo’ contingent, players who were born in Britain but were eligible to play for Ireland under FIFA rules relating to parentage. The article is based on self-evaluations recorded in newspaper and magazine interviews and in players' ‘auto’ biographies. It further examines the reactions by various individuals outside Ireland to this phenomenon and the views of Irish fans towards player eligibility and selection. The article places this work in an analytical context of sport and nationalism, with particular emphasis on the complex relationships between sport and nationalism in Ireland. The article argues that there is evidence of significant attitudinal differences between players; that players' attitudes are by no means uniform but range from the ’careerist’ to the ’nationalist’ position. Responses to this phenomenon have been sharply divided between those who view it as a dilution of the authentically Irish nature of the team to those who see it as a pragmatic response to an otherwise limited player pool.

Watching the Directive: Sports rights and public culture in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland

This paper investigates the way in which the European Union's Television Without Frontiers directive (recently re-named the Audio-Visual Media Services directive, AVMS) was implemented by two neighbouring states, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Focusing on the broadcasting rights for live international cricket matches in England and the rights for the live coverage of the Republic of Ireland soccer team's competitive home matches, the paper will highlight each state's approach to marrying the cultural rights of its citizens with the demands of the free market. The article locates the response of each state within the wider framework of the development of European media markets and their respective industrial/cultural policy therein.

Tales from the Fifth Green Field: The Psychodynamics of Migration, Masculinity and National Identity amongst Republic of Ireland Soccer Supporters in England

Based on qualitative research on Irish soccer supporters in England in the 1990s it is argued that these supporters' substantial devotions of time, emotion, imagination and money were psychic investments through which international soccer became a symbolic means of negotiating the contingency and vicissitudes of emigrant Irish national identity. However, this projected symbolism was inevitably contradictory. While collective gathering and drinking created a ‘liminal’ space through which individual lives' spatio-temporal coordinates and uneven migrant biographies temporarily dissolved in rituals of national identification, these were inextricably intertwined with the construction and reconstruction of masculine identities, entailing occasions for both ‘bonding’ and internal mutual differentiation and disputes arising from disagreements regarding supporters' origins and commitment. These were particularly significant for ‘second generation Irish’ supporters whose ‘Irishness’ was predicated on unambiguous masculine identity and continuity despite familial histories of migration, but whose ‘credentials’ as such were repeatedly questioned.

Women’s Soccer in the Republic of Ireland: Some Preliminary Sociological Comments

This essay endeavours to present a more reality‐congruent understanding of aspects of the emergence and development of women’s soccer in Ireland since the 1970s. It draws on interview and survey data, and on the author’s elite level involvement in women’s soccer since the mid 1990s, to suggest that a present day phenomenon – in this case, females’ increasing involvement in a traditionally male‐associated sport like soccer – is more adequately understood as a specific point in a longer and wider developmental social phenomenon. In comparison to previous works in this general area (for example, Bourke and Williams), it is suggested that females’ increasing participation in soccer in Ireland is more adequately understood, in sociological terms, by looking at: (i) the position of soccer in the overall status hierarchy of sports; (ii) female and male athletes’ positions within soccer; (iii) the consequences of social relations for the self‐conceptions of males’ and females’ habituses: and, (iv) the ways in which changes in the self‐images and social make‐up of male and female athletes are inextricably bound up with changes in the social structure of gender relations generally. Finally, this chapter offers some ideas for future directions in research on women’s soccer, and women’s sports more generally.

Keeping Them Under Pressure: Masculinity, Narratives of National Regeneration and the Republic of Ireland Soccer Team

Since 1988 the Republic of Ireland soccer team has been cast, in Irish media, as both symbol and material example of social, economic and cultural regeneration in Ireland. This paper argues that such claims are narrative discursive constructions, ways of collectively imagining national identity and interpreting recent social change by elevating individuals within the national team to the status of heroic national representatives and conjunctural markers of the tension between tradition and modernity. Two versions of this narrative are identified. The first is the construction of the team in terms of a narrative of postcolonial national ‘becoming’, which characterised the early years of Jack Charlton's managerial reign, Charlton himself being the key symbolic figure. The second is the more recent figuring of the team as symbol and example of the recent ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom, the key player in which was Roy Keane. In both narratives, aggressively competitive masculinity is romanticised as a gauge of national achievement, and narrative progression is figured as the progressive displacement of outmoded masculinities by new forms. The interplay of constructions of national identity and masculinity reflects the interdependency and contingency of both forms of collective identity.

A comparison of the physiological profiles of elite Gaelic footballers, hurlers, and soccer players

Background: Gaelic football, soccer, and hurling are prominent field games in Ireland and involve participants undertaking a variety of playing tasks and skills which place various physiological demands on the...

The Dream of Being a Professional Soccer Player

Because of the improved fortunes in international competition of the Republic of Ireland soccer team and increased media interest in the game, many youngsters embark on their dream to be a full-time professional player. Soccer in Ireland is mostly played on a part-time basis, with few openings for full-time professionals. English clubs are now recruiting youngsters at an early age through their football academies, and competition for playing positions is intense. This article outlines the implications for youngsters in Ireland of recent market developments in England and draws on theory and evidence to shed light on the nature of career planning undertaken by aspiring professional players. Details are also provided on the social networks that best facilitate a youth's career development given her decision to “go international” (to England).

British and Irish Sport: The Garrison Game and the G.A.A. in Scotland

This article reflects on the historic cultural and political cleavage between Irish Gaelic sports and the British sport of soccer. In nationalist Ireland soccer, a British innovation and largely British dominated game during the 19th and early 20th centuries, was traditionally known as ‘the garrison game’. This was due to its popularity within British garrison towns in Ireland while that country was part of the British Empire in the period up to 1922. Although still used by a few older stalwarts of the G.A.A., the description of soccer as ‘the garrison game’ has virtually passed as Gaelic sports have come to dominate in much of Ireland while soccer has become a globalised sport. The contextual setting for this paper is viewed through the sporting experience of the Irish diaspora in Scotland. Brief reference is made to Irish Catholic immigration into Scotland as well as Irish cultural resistance to British hegemony in late 19th century Ireland. The native Irish experience is compared with the differing sporting encounter of the Irish in Scotland. In Ireland, Gaelic sport eventually re-established itself throughout the country while for the Irish in Scotland, Gaelic sport struggled as soccer became the sporting avenue for social integration and national and cultural distinctiveness. Some of the reasons for this development are explained here, while this work also considers some later manifestations of antagonism between both sports and determines why the soccer-gaelic conflict has not been a significant issue in the Scottish diasporic context. This paper concludes that despite historical antagonisms between both sports, Celtic Football Club has served the Irish in Scotland in a similar way to which the G.A.A. has traditionally given shape and expression to ideas of Irishness in Ireland itself.