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Association football in Dublin in the late nineteenth century: an overview

ABSTRACT This article examines the initial growth and social background of early association football clubs in Dublin. The first clubs were created in 1883 under the influence of former public-school boys, whereas the game was already popular among the industrial class of Belfast, where clubs were operational by the late 1870s. After a decade of slow development in Dublin, a sudden take-off happened from 1892 onwards fuelled by the spread of soccer to the city’s clerks and skilled workers, an efficient administration, and its adoption as the game of choice by the Boys’ Brigades . This article will assess their respective importance to the game’s evolution in Dublin, as well as the factors and agencies which brought so many Dubliners to engage with it. In doing so it adds to what is known about soccer’s growth in the Republic of Ireland’s capital and also to studies on the early growth of the game within an Irish setting.