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Ireland 0 - 13 England - 18/02/1882
By: Clint Date: February 22, 2022, 12:39 pm
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HTML https://www.newsletter.co.uk/sport/football/northern-ireland/anniversary-date-marks-record-breaking-result-in-history-of-ireland-and-england-3579612
[quote]Anniversary date marks record-breaking result in history
of Ireland and England
One-hundred-and-forty years ago – on Saturday 18th February 1882
– Ireland played its first ever international football match.
The match was something of a humiliation: beaten 0–13 by
England. 667 matches later, it remains to this day Northern
Ireland’s worst ever result (the Ireland team continuing today
as Northern Ireland) and England’s best ever result.
Football was a young sport in Ireland at this time. Although the
association code of football was being played by some in other
parts of Ireland, it was only in Belfast and parts of Ulster
that it had become properly organised through the formation of
the Irish Football Association fifteen months previously. The
IFA was small: in 1882, it only had thirteen member clubs, all
in Ulster. In England, by contrast, the FA was in its nineteenth
year, football had been experiencing a huge boom since the
1870s, and the international team had thirteen matches under its
belt against Scotland and Wales.
The first priorities of the IFA in its first season, 1880–81,
were establishing itself as an effective governing and
administrative body and organising the Irish Cup competition. In
April 1881, however, the Association was invited to attend a
conference in Manchester of the ‘kindred associations throughout
the United Kingdom’ (the second such event, hosted by the
Lancashire FA and including the English county associations as
well as the national associations).
Amongst other business, the delegates to the conference agreed
amongst themselves various inter-association fixtures, and the
Irish delegate and IFA Treasurer, John Sinclair of the Knock
club, 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, and ‘stimulate the players to more
assiduous practice’.
Organisation of the match began in December 1881. Following
‘lively conversation’ at the IFA Committee meeting on 5th
December, it was resolved: ‘That the International Colours be
Royal Blue Jersey and Hose and white Knickers,’ (the
first-choice colours were not changed to green until 1931). Upon
the shirt would be a ‘beautiful badge’ 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,’ designed by Committee member Mr McMillan of the Queen’s
Island club.
At the next meeting on 22nd December, there was ‘an animated and
lengthened discussion’ about who should be eligible to represent
Ireland, the decision being that the qualification should be
birth or seven years’ residence in Ireland.
As preparation for the big day, the Association arranged a
representative match at Cliftonville for a ‘Belfast and
District’ team against an Ayrshire F.A. team on 21st January.
Rather worryingly, the Belfast team lost to the Scots by twelve
goals to nil. Next, the Committee asked member clubs to send in
the names of players ‘competent for selection for a trial match
on Saturday 11th February’ to enable the Association to select a
team to play against England and Wales. The Committee selected
eleven ‘Probables’ and eleven ‘Improbables’ for the trial match,
to be played for an hour, after which the Committee would
convene to select the international team, who would then
immediately play a practice match against a ‘Scotch XI’ made up
of Belfast-based Scottish footballers.
An offer from Knock of the use of their ground at Bloomfield for
the international match and the trial was accepted. Only four of
the humiliated Belfast and District team played in the trial,
which the Improbables won by a single goal. A 1–4 defeat for the
international team in the ensuing match against the local Scots
didn’t bode well for the real thing in a week’s time.
Admission prices were set at sixpence for men, threepence for
schoolboys and ladies free. A sub-committee was tasked with
arranging the advertising of the match and the entertainment of
the England party, while another was appointed to look after the
ground arrangements. The Castle Restaurant in the newly opened
Queen’s Arcade, Donegall Place, was selected to host the
post-match dinner, the proprietor George Fisher submitting in
advance a menu for approval costing four shillings and sixpence
per head. The Irish players were charged five shillings each and
required to pay in advance (whether attending or not). The extra
sixpences would have helped allay the cost of the English
party’s dinner.
Sinclair arranged with the Belfast & County Down Railway for
special trains to be run between Queen’s Quay and Bloomfield on
the day of the match.
The choice of Bloomfield as the venue prompted criticism from an
anonymous correspondent to the Belfast News-Letter. The writer
considered that the grounds at Cliftonville were ‘obviously more
suitable and convenient’ than those at an ‘out-of-the-way place
like Bloomfield’, and predicted that gate receipts would be
disappointing as a result. This prompted two replies in defence
of the chosen ground, noting the availability of public
transport in the form of tramcars and trains.
The Bloomfield ground was a new one – it had been acquired by
the Knock football and lacrosse clubs in May 1881 – but was very
basic. It had a pavilion, but no stands or turnstiles, and the
best view was apparently obtained from an adjacent railway
embankment or the roadway. A contemporary account refers to it
as being enclosed by a wire fence, and one from much later
mentions a hedge. Its precise location is unclear, though we
know that the entrance gate was beside Bloomfield railway
station, which means it was on the south-eastern side of the
Beersbridge Road, close to the Upper Newtownards Road. It was
never used again as an international venue, the Ulster Cricket
Ground at Ballynafeigh being the preferred choice for the next
number of years. It hosted the 1883 Irish Cup final and a
Charity Cup semi-final in 1884, but nothing of note after this.
Its last use was by the Albion rugby club in the 1891–92 season
before being built over.
The chosen team had a very middle-class aspect. Of the eleven
players given the honour of representing Ireland in this
historic match, nine were from the professional and commercial
classes, including an accountant, a doctor and a future
Presbyterian minister.
Two of the team, however were working men. Rattray, a shipyard
worker, and Johnston, a blacksmith, represented the future
working-class character of football in Ireland. Johnston, at
only fifteen years of age, remains the youngest ever person to
represent Ireland or Northern Ireland. All eleven belonged to
Belfast clubs: five from Knock, four from Cliftonville, one from
Avoniel and one from Distillery. The team also featured three
United Kingdom lacrosse internationals: Billy McWha, John
Sinclair and Alex Dill.
The England team was made up of similar men. This was still the
era of the gentleman amateur, though it was coming to an end
(professionalism would be legalised in England in 1885), and
eight of the team were former public schoolboys with current or
future careers in business and the professions. Three, however,
were from more modest backgrounds: Aston Villa’s Arthur Brown
was an earring-maker and his club-mate Howard Vaughton a
machinist, while Jimmy Brown of Blackburn Rovers, the son of a
publican, was a solicitor’s clerk.
It was, however, a relatively inexperienced team at
international level: seven of the team were making their debuts,
while for two it was their second cap. The most experienced
player was Charles Bambridge of the Swifts, who was making his
fourth appearance, and who would go on to earn eighteen caps and
score twelve goals. Jimmy Brown would captain the Blackburn
Rovers team that won three successive FA Cups between 1884 and
1886.
The match kicked off at 2.45 in very unpleasant conditions, but
nonetheless attracted an unquantified ‘large attendance’. Wind,
rain and hail continued for the first fifteen minutes, before
abating. Within that time, England – wearing white jerseys with
the FA badge embroidered on the left breast – had scored three
times, Vaughton getting the first goal after only three minutes.
The improvement in the weather seemed to assist the Irish team a
little: they managed some forays into English territory via the
wings, and reduced the scoring rate so that England only managed
another two goals before half-time. In the second half, however,
matters only got worse and another eight goals were conceded as
the English forwards ‘dribbled and passed in a specially clever
manner’ and the Irish defence became demoralised. The speed of
Bambridge, Jimmy Brown and Harry Cursham drew particular praise
from the local reporter. And so it finished 13–0, the Aston
Villa forwards Vaughton and Arthur Brown scoring respectively
five goals and four goals each.
Of course, it was never expected that the Irish team, made up of
relative novices, would pose any kind of serious challenge to
the England team, but the magnitude of the defeat must have been
dispiriting. While the backs, and in particular the goalkeeper,
were criticised (the Sporting Gazette described them as ‘weak in
the extreme’), there was some praise for the forward play of
McWha and Jack Davison on the right wing. Of the defenders,
Rattray, was considered to have done best and appears to have
prevented an even greater score by clearing the goal line on
more than one occasion.
The post-match dinner, presided over by the IFA president Lord
Spencer Chichester, came off successfully, after which the
English team retired to the Queen’s Hotel, on the corner of York
Street and Donegall Street.
A week later, the Irish team travelled to Wrexham to play Wales.
Another heavy defeat ensued, though it was possible to discern
improvement: the first ever Irish goal, scored by Sam Johnston,
was an equaliser; the team was only 1–2 down at half-time; the
five further goals conceded in the second-half collapse were
blamed on the previous day’s rough passage across the Irish Sea;
and Wales would go on to defeat England two weeks later. While
it was an inauspicious start to international football,
nonetheless Ireland now had its own team and would soon join the
other home nations in the annual International Championship. In
1886, the IFA would become a founder member of the International
Football Association Board, the body that continues today to
write the rules of the world’s biggest sport and of which
Northern Ireland remains a permanent member.[/quote]
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