On the surface, you may not think the priests behind a covert Catholic Church plot, a superfan with a gun, and a tennis US Open finalist have much in common.
But they're just some of the colourful characters that have shaped the history of soccer in Dublin, and made the game what we know it to be today. Soccer and Society in Dublin: A History of Association Football in Ireland’s Capital is a new book by Trinity College lecturer and sports historian Conor Curran, which explores the the long and winding road - and all the little side streets - that "the English game" has gone down in the capital since the late 1800s.
The project began in 2019, and was meant to coincide with Ireland's scheduled Euro 2020 games in Dublin - but Covid-19, obviously, put paid to those plans. So Conor decided to spin his research into a book.
He told Dublin Live: "In 2019, I got asked by Dublin City Council to do a Euro 2020 legacy project. The idea was to interview players about their experiences of playing in Dublin.
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"We were also going to have an exhibition in 2020 to coincide with the matches that were in Dublin at the Aviva, and give a series of talks around Dublin as well. I started off doing the interviews, but then Covid came along.
"I just decided to change focus, and focus more on writing the history of soccer in Dublin, I has previously done some stuff before as part of my research for Irish Soccer Migrants. There had been bits and pieces before published, but no one had ever really put a full book together from the very beginning up to the early 21st Century."
Conor dug into the archives once the worst of the pandemic had passed, investigating the records of the Leinster FA and the FAI in UCD, as well as the Catholic Church, and various other sources. He also pooled together around twenty interviews with a number of former players, including Pat Fenlon, Olivia O'Toole, Stephen McGuinness, and Shane Supple.
But when asked about what the most interesting part of the journey to research was, Conor's mind was taken back to a time long before any of those names had graced a Dublin playing field - the First World War. He said: "A lot of the stuff on the First World War was pretty interesting, there hadn’t really been much written about Dublin players who’d served in the War from different clubs.
"The IRFU had a pals battalion set up for local rugby players to enlist, the IFA didn’t have that, so you just have different players from clubs joining up. One of the players was Manliffe Francis Goodbody, he would have played for Ireland in the late 19th Century, he was a tennis player who played in the 1894 US Championship [now US Open] final, he was into horses.
"He was from Blackrock, and his ship was torpedoed in the English Channel in 1916. There was a team called Olympia, they were one of the founder members of the Free State League [the modern day League of Ireland], and they won the Leinster Minor Cup in 1914.
"But by the end of 1915, Olympia had 22 players serving in the War. The captain, R.F. Kinninmont, he wrote a letter back to the Evening Herald talking about his experiences in France. He gave details of the situation there, but he often wondered on a Saturday how Olympia were getting on.
"There was a player called Victor Pollock, from Shelbourne, he survived the war, and he married a French woman, and they settled in Kimmage. Another player was Ned Brearly, he was given awards for bravery for serving in the 16th Irish Division. He came back to football and played in the 1923 Free State Cup Final.
"But there were other players who weren’t as fortunate and were killed. St James’ Gate had a player called Pvt Joseph Kane, he died from wounds sustained at the Battle of Mons.
"Frank Heaney, who was also an Irish international, fought at Flanders. Trojans FC lost a number of players to the Irish Guards, Shamrock Rovers lost James Keogh and the Skinner brothers.
"There were referees too, one fella called Quartermaster Sergeant Payne was a well known referee in Dublin football circles, so it wasn’t just players."
One infamous moment in Irish history was a game against Yugoslavia in 1955, which went ahead despite the best efforts of the Catholic Church and then-Leader of the Opposition Eamon de Valera. Conor recalls: "In the 1950s, the Catholic Church didn’t want Ireland playing against Yugoslavia - they were a Communist country at the time, and there was a Catholic Cardinal who was being victimised by the government.
"Archbishop John McQuaid didn’t want the Irish team playing against Yugoslavia, but they played the game anyway, at Dalymount Park in 1955. Yugoslavia beat them 4-1.
"There was 22,000 at the match but some people stayed away, there was protests at the ground, Philip Greene the commentator refused to do the match. The Irish players who met the Yugoslavians said they were fine fellas, nothing wrong with them, why wouldn’t we play against them."
It all seemed to, eventually, go off without a hitch - but the Church would soon launch a cunning plot to try to stop such a game from taking place again on Irish soil. Conor explained: "But afterwards, the Church had a meeting in Drumcondra, and they tried to come up with ways of infiltrating the FAI.
"Priests had founded soccer clubs before that, St Kevin’s Boys was founded by a priest called Fr Des Williams, St Joseph’s Boys, Home Farm was set up off the back of an altar boys league, but the Catholic Church were more in with the GAA. They tried to get onto the FAI’s committees without the FAI knowing about it - they weren’t going to tell them they were trying to sneak in there.
"But it didn’t work anyway, some got onto committees but changed dioceses. They couldn’t really win favour in terms of who we played against.
"There’s an international fixture list, you can’t pick and choose. Ireland went on to play Romania towards the end of the ‘50s in a B international, and they played Czechoslovakia in 1960 in a European Championship qualifier."
The recent history in the book is mostly based on the oral interviews. And one such interview, with former Athlone, Dundalk, and Glentoran star Harry McCue, gave rise to one of the funniest anecdotes in the story.
Conor said: "I think it gives the book that personal edge too, it’s not just archives, there’s a lot of oral history in there too. In the 80s and 90s, there was more money in the North, in the Irish League.
"A lot of players went up, it was something different. But the Dublin players going up, they wouldn’t have been as baptised in fire - it was a big culture shock.
"Harry McCue would have played for San Diego, and he came back from America to join Glentoran in 1983. Crossing the border in south Armagh, he ran out of petrol, he was stopped outside some house and went in to ask for help.
"But next thing a Volkswagen fan pulled up and a fella got out of it with a gun. Your man asked him ‘what are you doing around here’, Harry showed him his Glentoran bag - and your man went and got him his petrol, and asked for his autograph!
"And then when he got up to Belfast, he came into the Park Avenue Hotel beside Glentoran’s ground, and he actually met the Rev Ian Paisley on the same day."
The stories are just a snapshot of what is in Conor's new book, Soccer and Society in Dublin: A History of Association Football in Ireland’s Capital. It's available now in all good bookshops and on publisher's Four Courts Press' website, which you can find at the link here.
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