No Foreign Game. Politics and Football in Ireland ft. James Quinn

How did football get to the island of Ireland? And is it a 'foreign' game? In this episode, co-hosts Guy and Francesco are joined by historian James Quinn to dive into the intriguing journey of football on the island of Ireland. Together, they explore whether football is truly a "foreign" game and how it has woven itself into the cultural and political landscape of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Along the way, James also touches upon Irish football's connection with Scotland, the developments that took place after the Good Friday Agreement and the emerging state of the women's game too.

James's book, No Foreign Game: Association Football and the Making of Irish Identities, is available from Merrion Press.

Transcript

No Foreign Game. Politics and Football in Ireland ft. James Quinn

Guy Burton 00:17

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the FootPol Podcast. I'm one of your co -hosts, Guy Burton, and I'm joined by Francesco Belcastro, my other co -host. Francesco, how are you doing today?

Francesco Belcastro 00:27

I'm alright, Guy. Were you about to forget my name? You have to think about it for a while! Who's my co -host? Because I know you're doing a lot of podcasts now, so maybe you are getting confused there, are you? 

Guy Burton 00:36

No, not at all. 

Guy Burton 00:38

Anyway, Francesco, how can I ever forget you? This is the central podcast. Tell me, do you know what we're talking about today? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:46

I've been looking forward to this episode for so long because we're talking about the country I really like, very interesting politics. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:57

I'll summarize it as the politics of football in Ireland, but I think it doesn't really make justice to the book that our colleague and guest has written. It's more than that. 

Guy Burton 01:12

Exactly. We are going to be talking about the politics of football in Ireland, and we mean all of Ireland so north and south. So it actually extends into the British Isles. 

Guy Burton 01:22

To do that, we're joined by the historian James Quinn. James, welcome to the show. 

James Quinn 01:27

Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here.

Guy Burton 01:31

Seriously, our pleasure, and having read the book, it's been a great read, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this. 

Guy Burton 01:38

The book that we're alluding to is called No Foreign Game, Association Football and the Making of Irish Identities, which is published by Merrion Press in Ireland. Just for listeners to know, James is a historian from Ireland, and he's written widely on a number of different aspects of Irish history. 

Guy Burton 01:58

He's also the managing editor of the Royal Irish Academy's A Dictionary of Irish b=Biography for which he's written over 250 of the entries mostly on politics, sport and popular culture. So I think we have a really good person here to talk to us and get it and help us get a sense of you know the game in Ireland. 

Guy Burton 02:16

And so can we start James? I mean the thing that yeah can we start from the beginning? I mean how did football develop on the island of Ireland and how was this bound up with the politics at the time? 

Guy Burton 02:26

And yeah we know that football, association football was growing during sort of the late 19th century and earlier 20th century and how was that affected in Ireland? 

James Quinn 02:37

Okay well to start at the beginning, Ireland had you know the same kind of folk football that you would have had elsewhere in in these islands and in Western Europe. 

James Quinn 02:52

Mostly curiously enough along the east coast in areas of Anglo -Norman settlement. But, um, and these are the games, you know, the, the participants were many and the rules were shoes. So they, they were, um, mass social organization, uh, events, rather chaotic often. 

James Quinn 03:11

And their influence, I think on association football is, is, is minimal really. I mean, they accustomed people to the idea of football and so on, but it still has to be, it has to be conceded that the, the game of association football for Ireland was an import, right? 

James Quinn 03:31

So, uh, the influence of England and the influence of Scotland was paramount, right? And, and it's interesting in it, in it, how that influences exercise, because in the north of the country, the main influence was Scotland, right? 

James Quinn 03:46

And it was particularly Scottish workers, um, transferring often between Glasgow and Belfast. Belfast and Clydeside were both very large, uh, shipbuilding centers. So there was an amazing, uh, an amazingly large transfer of workers between, between both, um, distilleries as well. 

James Quinn 04:10

Scottish distilleries often set up in Belfast and the Lagan Valley. So the game in Belfast and in the northeast of Ireland, generally had really from the beginning, quite a working class character. Okay. 

James Quinn 04:24

And that's important to bear in mind. Um, in the south, it was rather different in the south, particularly in Dublin. Um, the influence came more from English public schools, because there was a great deal of transfer of students from the south of Ireland to English public schools and back again, and, and sports for quite a long time, but was more of an elite, um, sport somewhere, you know, with many similarities to, 

James Quinn 04:58

rugby, actually, often the same form of transmission, the same playing constituency for quite a while. And this, in many ways, drove a bit of a wedge between the two parts of Ireland in that Belfast led the way in terms of numbers and also in terms of the institutional development of the sport. 

James Quinn 05:22

Because the Irish Football Association was founded in 1880, not in Dublin, in the capital, but in Belfast, which was, if you like, the industrial capital of the country. And I mean, you have similar situations elsewhere in that, say, you know, football was much more, association football was much more developed in the north of than it was in the capital of London. 

James Quinn 05:51

It was generally more developed in Scotland than Glasgow. industrial capital rather than Edinburgh, the administrative capital. And you see the same thing on the continent as well with, you know, the game far more developed in places like Turin and Milan than in Rome. 

James Quinn 06:09

So there was nothing altogether unusual about the development in Ireland. But what it did, what did mean was that too many Irish nationals and you have to, we're talking now say late 18th century, going into the late 19th century, rather going into the 20th century. 

James Quinn 06:28

And the big political issue in Ireland in these years is Home Rule, right? Should Ireland receive Home Rule, which is basically devolution within the United Kingdom to look after its own affairs. So most of the island is strongly in favor of this, the three quarters of the island. 

James Quinn 06:48

The one, the quarter that's holding out is the northeast, because their links with Britain are so close, industrially, culturally, religiously, that they, they're happy with the status quo. They don't want Home r=Rule. 

James Quinn 07:03

So the kind of nationalism, if you like, that when the Irish team starts playing in the 1880s and 1890s, the kind of nationalism it evokes is really a form of Irish nationalism that's complementary to British nationalism. 

James Quinn 07:21

So it's similar to, to the, the forms of Scottish and Welsh nationalism you see at the time, right? For the south, the team is not really looked upon as a vehicle of national pride, simply because it's based in Belfast. 

James Quinn 07:38

Most of the players who play for the team until the early 20th century are from the northeast and very few international games are held in Dublin. So the press and the nationalist press in Dublin very much sees association football as a foreign game to a certain extent, right? 

James Quinn 08:01

So that's the way things are going until about 1910s, when basically the game by this stage has gained a greater degree of foothold in the South, especially in Dublin. And it's spread out from those public schoolings to becoming a working man's game, right? 

James Quinn 08:25

So there are Dublin clubs participating in the Irish league. The base of the game, the base of the game support in Dublin now is increasingly solidly working class, right? So and the more working class it becomes, of course, the more schools and so on shed it in favor of rugby, because they don't want to be associated with a working class sport. 

James Quinn 08:50

And in 1914, actually, Ireland win the Home International Championship for the first time. And basically this, again, contributes to a level of support. But still, as a vehicle of national pride outside the Northeast, adoption is still tentative, right? 

James Quinn 09:16

And now that might have, you know, that might... Ireland had a very good team in 1914, and they probably would have gone on to greater success. But as we all know, a certain event, the First World War, intervened, and football was put on the back burner for a while. 

James Quinn 09:36

So during the First World War, then, you see a number of very important developments, right? In Ireland, you have the 1916 rising, which is an armed uprising against British rule, which is crushed fairly severely. 

James Quinn 09:53

And what happens then is nationalist sentiment in Ireland grows even stronger. So the idea that people previously had been happy with home rule, with devolution within the United Kingdom, you know, by 1918 or whatever, that's dead and buried. 

James Quinn 10:13

What people are looking for is almost complete, some form of complete or greater independence from Britain, okay? And that leads to an Anglo -Irish war in 1920 and 21. So what happens then is, because things have become a lot more polarized, nationalists in the South are not prepared to accept dictation from unionists in the North in any sphere, and that includes football. 

James Quinn 10:49

So nationalists believe that the Irish Football Association, which is the first country in the South, is not prepared to accept dictation from in Belfast, is not a truly national organisation. And so in 1921, what they decide to do is to form their own. 

James Quinn 11:05

Dublin -based, called the Football Association of Ireland. And so the two associations split, and they split at the same time as Northern Ireland is created, and the Irish Free State is created. Now that's not, it has to be stressed, that's not the reason why, because actually the football split precedes the political split. 

James Quinn 11:33

But it does provide an example and context. So Irish nationalists are thinking, if politically we're going to be independent, then we should also be independent on a sporting level. So what you have then is You've got two associations on the island. 

James Quinn 11:57

You've got, after a while, two national teams, and you've got this rather confused situation. The other UK associations don't really want an awful lot to do with the Dublin -based Football Association of Ireland. 

James Quinn 12:16

They see them as, to be honest, as troublemakers just stirring up the pot. And also, they don't like the fact that the Dublin -based Football Association of Ireland are trying to join FIFA because, at this stage, they're separate from FIFA, the UK associations, that is. 

James Quinn 12:37

So eventually, in 1923, the Dublin -based Association is admitted to FIFA, and that, again, widens the links between the two. So none of the UK football associations will play against the Irish national team. 

James Quinn 13:01

The first to do the Irish Free State, basically. 

Francesco Belcastro 13:14

James, can I ask you to verify something? Sorry, for listeners who might be a bit less familiar with the political situation. So we were talking about a partition we are referring to, is it 1923? 

Francesco Belcastro 13:25

Is that correct? 

James Quinn 13:26

1921, really. 

Francesco Belcastro 13:29

1921, okay. So from this, there is sort of separation in the history where there has been before and afterwards. 

James Quinn 13:38

Yeah. So what you have then, from 1921, you've got the two associations. 

James Quinn 13:47

The Northern Association, of course, are still part of the United Kingdom football set up. So they play the home international championship every year against England, Scotland, Wales. So they're okay. 

James Quinn 14:03

They've got games and they've got games against what are considered to be, you know, in the early twenties, the best teams in Europe still. The Southern Association doesn't have access to the home international championship. 

James Quinn 14:19

And so it has to look for games elsewhere. Okay. And it does that. As I say, it joins FIFA in 1923, but doesn't it plays, it sends an amateur team to play in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. And then it plays its first international against Italy in Turin in 1926. Yeah. 

Francesco Belcastro 14:44

I didn't know that. I wasn't aware that the first friendly was with Italy. 

James Quinn 14:48

Yeah. Yeah. The first and second because they played, they played in Turin in 1926, and then there was a return match in Dublin in 1927. 

James Quinn 14:59

So yeah, the very first full professional internationals were against Italy. And you'll be, Francesco, you'll be delighted to hear that Italy won both times. So, you know. 

Francesco Belcastro 15:11

A long history of matches, Italy and Ireland! 

James Quinn 15:16

Yeah, definitely. Well, that's where it began. So, well, but it's a complicated situation, as in everything to do with Ireland. A lot, because games are so hard to get for the Southern Irish Association, a lot of the Southern Irish players continue to play for Ireland, as it's called, the team that plays in the Home International Championship. 

James Quinn 15:45

So on occasion, there are people who are playing for both teams. And that actually continues up until 1950, when both teams joined FIFA, and they both start playing in the World Cup qualifying rounds. 

James Quinn 16:05

Because obviously, you can't have players in the same competition playing for different teams. 

Guy Burton 16:11

Could you could you sort of elaborate a bit more on this? Because, you know, why, why are we in a situation where players are able to play both, both the Northern Irish team and the Irish team, if you could sort of elaborate a little bit about that? 

Guy Burton 16:23

And what does that do to the to the to the two associations? 

James Quinn 16:29

Okay, well, it, the Irish Football Association, so this is the Belfast one, the original one, they don't really accept the split. They see the Dublin Association as an illegal body. 

James Quinn 16:45

So they see themselves as still having jurisdiction over the entire 32 counties of Ireland. Okay, rather than than just the six counties of the North. So they feel they can pick whoever they like. And generally speaking, most players are willing to play and they're willing to play, I think, partly because like most footballers, they want to play international football and they can't really do it just for the Southern team. 

James Quinn 17:18

Um, there are also financial reasons. And remember, these are days when footballers aren't very well paid. There's it's the days of the maximum wage. So the match fee you get for playing an international match is very welcome. 

James Quinn 17:33

And, and it's not just all mercenary that they're also, I think, quite a few idealistic footballers who are trying to keep links open between North and South and stop the partition of Irish football being too final. 

James Quinn 17:52

Because the point you made there, Guy, about how this affects the relations between the two associations, well, it doesn't help them at all, because there's a sense that they see the other association as poaching their players. 

James Quinn 18:11

And so relations rather deteriorate between the two associations from the 1920s onwards. It's interesting that Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, the Republic or Free State or whatever version of it, they don't actually play an international match together until 1978. 

James Quinn 18:35

And that's when they're drawn in the same European Championship group. So they have no choice but to play. They don't actually play a friendly international until 1998. So there's this long history of tension, of jurisdictional disputes going on. 

James Quinn 18:57

And even then, back in 1950, where players in the South anyway are given an ultimatum to say that if you play for Northern Ireland, you will not be allowed play for the Republic of Ireland ever again. 

James Quinn 19:15

And that again sours relations because the Northern Ireland team had often relied very heavily on Southern players. And so once they're taken away, they go through a rather bad patch in the early 50s. 

James Quinn 19:31

But make it up soon after that. 

Francesco Belcastro 19:34

Can I ask you one thing, James, on this idea of nationality and identity? Because for listeners who might not be familiar with the situation in Ireland was, and it's quite complex in terms of who is eligible to what passport, right? So...

James Quinn 19:46

You're eligible for an Irish passport once you're born on the island of Ireland. 

Francesco Belcastro 19:52

Okay, okay.

James Quinn 19:53

Okay because original in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland it laid claim to the entire island of Ireland right so anybody Catholic Protestant or whatever would is entitled to an Irish passport.

Guy Burton 20:09

If I can jump in actually?

Francesco Belcastro 20:11

Sure, please.

James Quinn 20:12

Yeah, yeah.

Guy Burton 20:12

And so I mean and this might be just fast forwarding a little bit. Because you've talked about how you know Irish... Well, basically players can play for both teams. But then of course you know we have actually looking more recently, there was from about the 1980s onwards a very you know... Ireland's really went up in in the international awareness right under Jack Charlton with a lot of players that actually came with... Well, I guess we're English, but of Irish heritage. Can you tell us a little bit about how these players were able to play for Ireland?

James Quinn 20:44

Yeah well Francesco mentioned the issue of passports as well there was also an act passed in the 1950s, the Citizenship of Ireland Act. And basically because immigration from Ireland had been so great, it wanted to give people, the children of immigrants, some sort of strong link with Ireland. Okay? And under this law, if you had one Irish grandparent, you qualified, Irish born grandparent, you qualified for an Irish passport. 

James Quinn 21:17

Okay? So there was massive, the Irish economy was in an appalling state in the 1950s. So it was massive immigration to Britain, you know, too often to work in construction, to work at the NHS, to work in factories and so on. 

James Quinn 21:35

So you're talking hundreds of thousands left, that left. So a lot of these, their children were coming of age, if you like, by the late 70s, early 1980s. And of course, most of them, most of them actually had Irish parents. 

James Quinn 21:54

So they clearly qualified for Irish passports. And quite a few of them too, although born in England, were brought up in a situation where they were strongly familiar with Irish culture. So with things like games, with Irish music, Irish history, and so on. 

James Quinn 22:18

And so a great many of them felt quite a strong pull towards Ireland. There's quite an interesting story when the then the Irish manager, a guy called the own hand in the 1980s, and he approached the Everton goalkeeper, Jim McDonagh, to see if he would play for Ireland. 

James Quinn 22:41

And what McDonagh did on meeting him was to start reciting the revolutionary 1916 Proclamation, which he had actually memorized. So his his Irish heritage meant so much to him. And he said he had always wanted to play for Ireland and he would swim the Irish Sea to play for Ireland. 

James Quinn 23:02

So there were there were a whole variety of motivations, right? So there were some people like Jim McDonagh, like Tony Grealish and so on, who were brought up in an Irish background. Tony Grealish had played Gaelic football for London in Wembley Stadium. 

James Quinn 23:17

So he he was very familiar with Ireland and again, was very happy to represent his parents' homeland. But there's a whole range of that. So you players like that. But you've also players who didn't have a particularly strong attachment to Irish culture or whatever, but they did want to play international football and they were able to do so because of having an Irish background. 

James Quinn 23:43

I mean, you have someone like Andy Townsend, who says more or less his, who played for Ireland in the late 80s through to the 90s, that his links with Ireland were very tenuous, really. He had a Kerry grandmother, but he, he played for Ireland. 

James Quinn 24:00

Um, he was actually one of the team's most committed players and was very much adopted by our Ireland fans as, as a hero really, because of his level of commitment. John Aldridge would be another who said, you know, he hadn't thought a whole lot about his Irish background, but because he was Scouse and he said, you were Cuddly and said, feel often feel more Irish than English or, or at a time when maybe there would have been that to say, 

James Quinn 24:29

maybe it's, you know, early eighties with Thatcherism, a slight degree of alienation against what they saw as Southern England or whatever. Um, so in that way, it was often an act of protest. And above all, what, what really gave it momentum is that it was successful, you know, that particularly when, when Jack Charlton came along and he harnessed this combination of Irish born and British born players, 

James Quinn 24:59

and they qualified for 1988 European championships, 1990 World Cup, 1994 World Cup. So the, the, I think what helps these things to work is success on the pitch. So that's why English born players were, were received almost without protest. 

James Quinn 25:18

I think because it was successful. 

Guy Burton 25:21

And I was just going to ask, because of course, at this time as well, you have a number of players who are mixed race. I mean, the most notable being, you know, Chris Hughton, who was the Irish mother and a Ghanaian father, and I think also then Paul McGrath, who, who was also mixed race, I mean, so these are the first sort of, you know, nonwhite players playing in, in Ireland. Does that have any kind of influence or effect on, on, on Irish public sentiment about the nature of the diaspora? 

James Quinn 25:45

I think it does. I mean, in when the team played in the 1994 World Cup, you know, across their backline, they had three defenders, Paul McGrath, Phil Babb, and Terry Phelan. 

James Quinn 25:59

And so a lot of African -Americans were looking at his Irish team with this very strong black representation, and that surprised them. And I think for black people living in Ireland as well, you know, to see people who looked like them pulling on a green shirt, it showed that, you know, stereotypical ideas of what it meant to be Irish were often thrown out the window. 

James Quinn 26:25

So I think it did have a very strong effect. And I mean, that's carried through right the way through now. We've had a considerable number of black players. And actually, one of the biggest migrant groups in Ireland these days is the Nigerian community. 

James Quinn 26:43

And very often, current Irish teams will often feature four or five players with a Nigerian heritage and so on. So in terms of redefining what it is to be Irish, I think that happened in the 80s with the number of English players that were there and has happened even more so now with migrant players. 

James Quinn 27:07

And I think it's interesting because it shows that nationality is not just territorial. There's also an ethnic dimension to it. So if you're brought up in London feeling Irish, you can pull on a green jersey with pride. 

James Quinn 27:24

There's nothing artificial about it because you already have those strong ethnic links to the country. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:33

Going back to the historical part and on the Northern Ireland specifically, it's probably one of the most interesting aspects from a political point of view:

Francesco Belcastro 27:43

Can you tell us a bit about sort of the insight regarding the impact of sectarian divisions and violence during the troubles and then obviously the Good Friday Agreement. What was the effect of these on the status of football in Northern Ireland? 

James Quinn 27:59

Yeah, I mean the sectarianism because soccer is the game of the masses, if you like, sectarianism has always been a question, especially in Northern Ireland. The leading club side in Northern Ireland in the 30s and 40s was a thing called Belfast Celtic. 

James Quinn 28:26

And Belfast Celtic was almost entirely supported by nationalists and they were also very successful. But Belfast Celtic was actually forced out of the league by a really serious riot in a game against the great rivals Linfield in 1949. 

James Quinn 28:44

And then this was one of the most, I think, horrific incidents. that's ever taken place in a football ground in these islands where a particular Belfast Celtic player who happened to be a Protestant was singled out by the Linfield crowd who managed to drag him onto the terrace and then set about breaking his legs and probably would have killed him, but for the fact that he was rescued by a former teammate. 

James Quinn 29:11

And after that Belfast, Belfast Celtic directors decided that someone will get killed and they withdrew from the league in 1949. And the club just, you know, its history and so on was just sort of removed at one fell swoop. 

James Quinn 29:29

And so it showed that the level that passions could get up to in Northern Ireland. And this has gone back to the 40s. So it's before the outbreak of serious troubles. And that left really only one nationalist club in Northern Ireland and that was Derry City. 

James Quinn 29:47

So, with the outbreak of the troubles in the late 60s and so on, and Derry, of course, was one of the hotspots, an awful lot of other clubs would not go and play in Derry, considering it to be too dangerous. 

James Quinn 30:04

And Derry were forced to play their games in other parts of the world. And so what happened really was that Derry's position was made untenable. And in 1972, they were really forced to withdraw from the league. 

James Quinn 30:22

So that left Northern Ireland League without, if you like, a nationalist team. OK, now, what did happen because there was a vacuum there, a club from North Belfast called Cliftonville, who had previously been amateur, became professional, I think, in 1974, and attracted a great deal of nationalist support from North and West Belfast. 

James Quinn 30:47

So they became the flag bearers, right? So if you like, the troubles didn't let's say they didn't help the problem of sectarianism in Northern Ireland football, because attitudes became more entrenched. 

James Quinn 31:01

The chants and the songs became nastier. And most games, say games between Cliftonville and Linfield or Cliftonville and Glentoran, needed massive policing. In fact, very often at these games, there were more police than supporters, you know, you'd have over a thousand police and fewer supporters than that. 

James Quinn 31:22

So that's really that added a great deal of edge to. Because you can get away with saying and shouting and singing things in football stadiums that you can't do in the street. So they often became almost theatres for the enactment of sectarian politics. 

James Quinn 31:45

OK, which, of course, made meant that mainstream fans often just filtered away really, and it gave a sort of hard edge to local leagues, which isn't to say everyone who went was sectarian, but a sizeable proportion of the crowd was. 

James Quinn 32:08

So that's the way that left. The other effect of the Troubles, I think, was initially, I think in the 70s, there was some hope that maybe if the two international Irish teams came together in a show of unity, that they might basically bridge some of the divides and make sport something that brought people together rather than drove people apart. 

James Quinn 32:31

And so there was quite a famous game where an all -Ireland team, under the name of Shamrock Rovers, played against Brazil in 1973, and and they gave a very good account of themselves. They were beaten for three, but they were a scratch team and, you know, to run the world champions within one goal was considered a major achievement. 

James Quinn 32:57

So that gave a great deal of impetus to the idea that north and south should combine, put one together, one team, and sync all their differences in sport. Unfortunately, that got nowhere, right? So basically, Northern Ireland supporters didn't want it and Southern supporters were half -hearted about it. 

James Quinn 33:18

And so that left the situation as it is now. Okay. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:22

Just before we continue, James, just for the listeners who are not based in the in the UK or in Europe. When we talk about the Troubles, we're referring to a period of unrest that started in the mid to late 60s. 

James Quinn 33:34

Yeah, 1968 -69, really, through to the ceasefire in 1994, or the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. 

Guy Burton 33:44

And it basically starts because, you know, nationalists feel that they're sort of being underrepresented, discriminated against, marginalized. 

Guy Burton 33:54

You've alluded to the fact that within the league, a lot of the teams that are left after Derry leaves are unionist teams. But in the national team, in the Northern Ireland team, you have a number of nationalists, you know, nationalist players, don't you? 

James Quinn 34:09

Absolutely. 

Guy Burton 34:10

And how do the Troubles affect them? How does the team cope with, you know, with what's going on at home? 

James Quinn 34:20

You might say surprisingly well, because, I mean, the 1980s in particular are almost the early 1980s are a golden age for the Northern Ireland football team. 

James Quinn 34:30

They qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, where they beat the hosts. The team is usually is very close to the proportions of the population of Northern Ireland. It's usually about six or seven players from a unionist background and four or five players from a nationalist background. 

James Quinn 34:52

And a lot of the national players and people like Gerry Armstrong, Martin O 'Neill, Pat Jennings are all from nationalist background. And again, they're generally received well, I think, by Northern Ireland supporters. 

James Quinn 35:06

And by this, Northern Ireland supporters really see the Northern Ireland team as a real expression of their identity, of their British nationalism, British Irish nationalism. So the idea of a united Ireland team really doesn't appeal to them because that's almost like surrendering their birthhood or something like that. 

James Quinn 35:33

Now, obviously, it was probably quite difficult for some players from a nationalist background to stand for God Save the Queen as it was then. But again, they make these compromises and they keep quiet about it. 

James Quinn 35:50

And that's very much the case until really around the late 1990s. And this is interesting because by then the violence has stopped. We've had the Good Friday Agreement and so on. And there seems to be, by this time, a less welcoming attitude to Catholic nationalist players from a segment of Northern Ireland fans. 

James Quinn 36:19

I mean, it's always important not to generalize overly in these because very often the agenda tends to be set by the extremes. And that really crystallizes in the early 2000s with the case of Neil Lennon, who's captain of Celtic at the time. 

James Quinn 36:39

And also Neil Lennon, he's clearly a nationalist and he makes no secret about his nationalism. He makes it clear that he would like to see a united Ireland. He's prepared to play for Northern Ireland, but he would like to see a united Ireland. 

James Quinn 36:55

And he basically gets very often booed by his own supporters and gets death threats, gets sent bullets in the post and things like that. So he withdraws from the Northern Ireland team because of this. 

James Quinn 37:12

And I think this sets in motion a movement within the Northern Ireland international team, a realization that they have to try and make their team more welcoming for players from a nationalist background and also try to attract some supporters from a nationalist background, because I wouldn't say there are no supporters from a national background supporting the Northern Ireland football team at this stage, 

James Quinn 37:42

but very, very few. And they'll keep quiet. about the background, basically. So that's what happens. And so the Irish Football Association create this "Football for All" idea where that they're trying to play down excessive symbolisms of British nationalism. 

James Quinn 38:02

And, you know, they're quite offensive sectarian songs in song like Billy's Boys, where people talk about being up to their necks in Fenian blood and things like that. So things like that are considered unacceptable. 

James Quinn 38:17

And it is quite amusing what they do, that they encourage fans, they give fans drums and encourage them that, for example, if someone starts an offensive song, they immediately drown it out with an inoffensive song like "We're Not Brazil, We're Northern Ireland" or something like that, you know, which is a bit cheesy, but it's also indicative that basically the majority of supporters don't want this team to be associated with sectarianism. #

Guy Burton 38:46

To what extent has sectarianism sort of, you know, departed Northern Irish football and manifested itself elsewhere? Because I think when you were talking about Neil Lennon, you alluded to, you know, Celtic, and of course, there's a strong Irish influence and presence in Scotland, of course, with with Celtic and Glasgow with Hibernian in Edinburgh. 

Guy Burton 39:05

I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about that Irish connection and, you know, the extent to which, you know, some of these, you know, aspects of political life in Ireland are sort of manifested, you know, beyond the channel. 

James Quinn 39:21

Okay, okay. That's a big question, but let's do what I can. Well, to be honest, the first football team founded by Irish people was actually Hibernian in Edinburgh in 1875. And it was founded by Irish clerics and so on, out of Catholic Young Men's Association. 

James Quinn 39:44

And mainly it was because that Scottish teams wouldn't accept Irish players, right? So everyone always looks at the Scottish thing as sectarian, but it's really ethnosectarian. It's, you know, a lot, Scottish society wasn't so much opposed to Catholics as it was opposed to Irish Catholics, you know, because there were so many of them, they were coming in, they were taking jobs, and all the rest. 

James Quinn 40:11

And Hibernian end up being quite successful, and they give the impetus to the foundation for Celtic FC in 1887, I think it is. And above all, Celtic FC become the real standard bearers of Irish pride in Scotland. 

James Quinn 40:30

And, you know, at one stage, actually, topping the Scottish league were Celtic, Borne and Hibernian too. And I think it was one of the Scottish newspapers said, look, you know, and, you know, football 

James Quinn 40:43

is very important to Scottish pride. You know, we can't have these Irishmen showing us the way. And of course, the club who stepped up to take on that challenge was Rangers FC. So you get this, the Celtic-Rangers rivalry really from about the 1890s onwards. 

James Quinn 40:59

And it becomes one of the great rivalries of world football, basically, you know. You know, Rangers representing Scottish Presbyterianism, Celtic representing Irish Catholicism. And I mean, that lasts and, you know, in many ways too, it contributes to the fact of making Glasgow one of the great, maybe the great world football cities, you know, that by the turn of the 20th century, I mean, there are three stadiums in Glasgow, 

James Quinn 41:35

with a capacity of almost 100 ,000, Celtic Park, Ibrox, and Hamden Park. And so it shows how rivalry galvanizes the popularity of the game. And I mean, that carries right the way through. Celtic periodically get into trouble about flying the Irish flag in Celtic Park. 

James Quinn 42:01

To this day, there's a Green Brigade of Celtic supporters who lean strongly towards Irish nationalism and so on. Throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles, a lot of the sectarian songs that you could hear in Belfast, you would also hear in Glasgow, people are waving Irish tricolors or Union Jacks, often to wind up the opposition, but at the same time indicative of their own loyalties and so on. 

James Quinn 42:36

Now, all of that has calmed down to some extent these days, but it's still there beneath the surface. And you've had this long standing debate: Is Celtic a Scottish club, an Irish club or a Scottish Irish club, or some sort of hybrid or whatever? 

James Quinn 42:58

And depending on whichever Celtic fans you talk to, you'll get different answers about that. But that also did mean that the club received quite a degree of hostility in Scotland, not just from Rangers. 

James Quinn 43:12

Interestingly, if you read the memoirs of Celtic players, they say the worst hostility they tended to get was often outside of Glasgow from other teams who were more or less considering them to be representing a foreign state with foreign values and so on. 

Francesco Belcastro 43:31

James, thank you very much. So we have looked with focus a lot on sort of sectarian divisions in these aspects. I'm sure we would have a lot of questions on other aspects. Can I ask you a final one? 

Francesco Belcastro 43:43

So, particularly in the Republic of Ireland, are there, would you say that football reflects other divisions, say regional center periphery, is politics, does politics show in other ways? Perhaps in the domestic, I don't know, Cork versus Dublin rivalries, they're sort of plus dimension there, are they important? 

James Quinn 44:07

Yeah, no, yes, obviously it does reflect different regional rivalries, but not to, they're not to a very great extent, you know, they're not particularly violent. Within Dublin, there's actually a strong, probably the strongest rivalry would be between Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers, which actually represents the north and south of the city. 

James Quinn 44:38

So that's kind of the most... the most strange rivalry. I mean, just probably one area we haven't touched on and which maybe I don't know, maybe too late to touch on. But I mean, one of the most interesting aspects of the game now is with the women's game, you know, because that's the real area of growth and of interest and so on, you know. 

James Quinn 45:01

So the numbers playing soccer are growing, but mainly because young girls are playing and the level of interest now that the women's international team is getting from media and so on. So I can certainly see today, particularly if the women's team qualify for an int- 

James Quinn 45:20

They did qualify for the recent World Cup, but qualify and do well. I can see them being a wonderful vehicle for national pride as well and perhaps without carrying the same level of maybe political and sectarian baggage that the male team with, you know, that 120 years of history have behind them. 

James Quinn 45:45

So maybe if we wanted to end on a somewhat more optimistic note, it might be that actually perhaps the women's game will, you know, remove some of the more toxic elements from the long story of Irish football, you know. 

Francesco Belcastro 46:04

As a podcast, we are always very, very big on big fans of women's football. So we can have this expectation. Yes, that's a much better way, much more positive way of concluding the podcast. Guy?

Guy Burton 46:20

No, no, no. And that's been fantastic. Thank you, James, so much for taking the time to talk to us. If you could just remind the listeners of your book and where that, you know, who it's published by and where they might be able to find it. 

James Quinn 46:32

Yeah, it's the book is entitled No Foreign Game, Association Football and the Making of Irish Identities by me, James Quinn. It's published by an Irish publisher, Merrion Press, and I imagine it's available on all good online outlets as well as Irish bookshops. 

James Quinn 46:54

So anyway, thank you very much for the opportunity. It was a pleasure talking to you both. And yeah, good luck with all your work. You're doing a great job, lads. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:08

Thank you very much, James. Can I just add that Guy is a very, very harsh reviewer. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:13

So he's very tough on books. And he's been so enthusiastic about your book. I've rarely heard him being so enthusiastic about something. So I should really, really encourage listeners to read it. Is that correct, Guy? 

Guy Burton 47:25

I mean, yes, I would say that, you know, we've really only just touched the sides. in this discussion about what you can find in the book. I mean, I kept coming across page after page, going, oh, I hadn't thought about that. 

Guy Burton 47:36

Well, that's a new angle. So it was so thorough. So James, thank you so much for sharing with us, because this is something also we've been wanting to do for a while. We've been talking about doing Irish football since we started this podcast about a year ago. 

Guy Burton 47:51

So thanks again, James. 

James Quinn 47:53

Thank you, Guy. 

Guy Burton 47:54

Francesco, before we go, what do we need to remind the listeners of all? 

Francesco Belcastro 47:58

Well, a few things. First of all, we need to remind the listeners that they need to rate, like, share the episode on whatever platform they're getting it from, the different options of doing that, and sort of share with friends as well, because you're trying to expand and make the podcast more popular. 

Francesco Belcastro 48:17

That's one thing. The second one is to get in touch with us. And how can they do that, Guy? 

Guy Burton 48:22

They can do that in a number of different ways. And this is to basically tell us whether they like what they're hearing, or even recommendations for future episodes which we can work on. 

Guy Burton 48:32

And they can do that by reaching out to us on the various social media accounts that we have. So Twitter or X, as it's now called, Facebook, Instagram. We have personal accounts at LinkedIn, sorry, personal pages at LinkedIn. 

Guy Burton 48:45

So you can reach out to us there. And we also, I think that's it, isn't it? 

Francesco Belcastro 48:50

When is the next episode, Guy? 

Guy Burton 48:51

Oh, right. Yeah, of course, episodes always come out on Monday mornings. So, do you want to do your coffee link? 

Francesco Belcastro 48:56

Yea, so Monday morning, it's a pretty different topic. It's going to be the very important issue of racism in football with Professor Christos Kassimeris. So big change, fascinating topic. I'm sure listeners are going to enjoy the episode. 

Guy Burton 49:08

Well, listen, it's been great talking to you, Francesco, and also to you, James. So I will speak to you again next week, then. 

James Quinn 49:14

Thanks, lads. All the best. Good luck now. Thank you. Bye.