Page 30 - Garda Journal Summer 2019

to have happened, as the Ulster Football Club was not established until the 1877–8 season, and then only to play rugby.
Another match was played at Ulsterville, Belfast, on 3 March 1877 by members of the Windsor (rugby) Football Club, divided into two teams distinguished by blue and red ribbons worn on the left shoulder and involving at least four Irish rugby internationals. This was a trial match for a planned exhibition fixture against the Caledonian Football Club of Glasgow which was scheduled for 21 April but which, for reasons unknown, did not take place.
It was arranged by James Calder, the secretary of Windsor, with contacts in Scotland, and was part of wider efforts by Scots to establish the association code in Ireland. There were also unsuccessful efforts by the Scottish FA to organise a match in Dublin, but it wasn’t until 1878 that efforts finally paid off, when Caledonian eventually made it to Ireland with Queen’s Park.
Separately from these developments, the Cork Constitution recorded a match played under association rules on 28 November 1877 in Mallow, Co. Cork, between a team from the local school, Penn’s, and Lismore College, Co. Waterford. It was played fifteen- a-side, with ‘unbroken good humour and hilarity’, and ended in a 0–0 draw. A return match at Lismore was anticipated, but if it did take place it wasn’t recorded.
“Alone, I did it.”
MCALERY: ALONE, HE DID IT?
In a letter to Sport in 1885, responding to the suggestion that Calder had introduced association rules to Ireland, McAlery sought to ‘set [the editor] right’ by proclaiming, ‘Alone, I did it’, in answer to the question of who started association football in Ireland. From the 1920s the journalist-chroniclers of Irish football have mostly subscribed to this claim, and particularly since the publication of Malcolm Brodie’s centenary history of the Irish FA in 1980 the ‘McAlery- alone’ story has been repeated in numerous books, articles and the websites of the IFA and FIFA.
McAlery, however, is not mentioned in any of the contemporary newspaper notices, reports or
correspondence, which describe the 1878 match as being staged ‘under the auspices’ of the Windsor and Ulster football clubs. The Scottish Football Annual noted a year later that ‘at last’ efforts by the Scottish FA to introduce association football to Ireland had been ‘crowned with success’, and the Irish Football Annual, published two years later, also credited the Scots, and in particular J.A. Allen, captain of the Caledonian club. The Ulster Football and Cycling News in 1888, however, did identify McAlery as the Irish contact with whom Allen corresponded, and by McAlery’s death in 1925 he was being given the sole credit. The Belfast News-Letter’s obituary claimed: ‘To Mr McAlery ... belongs the credit of having introduced the game of Association football into this country’.
To Mr McAlery ... belongs the credit of having introduced the game of Association football into this country.”
“
McAlery’s previous visit to Scotland is mentioned by the Belfast Telegraph at this time, and by 1979 Cliftonville’s centenary publication was describing the trip as a honeymoon. That aspect of the story is untrue, since McAlery did not get married until 1879. That on its own, of course, does not invalidate the rest of the story, but it does seem probable that the fully embellished tale of one man’s heroic endeavours is an exaggeration and that, while McAlery was involved, credit should be shared with others: the Scottish FA, Allen and Caledonian FC, Calder and Windsor FC, and Ulster FC, which hosted the match.
30 GARDA JOURNAL
ULSTER: GROWTH AND ORGANISATION
The exhibition match was a success. Several hundred people witnessed a strong Queen’s Park team, including five Scottish internationals, win 3–1, and sufficient interest was sparked to begin a process that by November 1880 had led to the establishment of the Irish Football Association.
The next step was another exhibition, arranged for April 1879, after the rugby season had ended, when a
HISTORY | John McAlery