Paul Rouse: FAI must award caps to 14 pioneers of Irish soccer

The first players to play for the newly-constructed Irish international team after the partition of Ireland and the establishment of the Football Association of the Irish Free State were never awarded international caps for the matches they played.

There are at least 14 players who were not deemed to be full internationals as a result of this. They are Paddy Duncan, Ernie MacKay, Michael Farrell and Thomas Murphy from St James' Gate; John Joe Dykes, Denis Hannon, Paddy Reilly and Frank Ghent from Athlone Town; Bertie Kerr, Johnny Murray, Christy Robinson, John Thomas and Ned Brooks from Bohemians; and Tony Hanston from Jacobs.

The FAI has an easy decision to make. They must recognise the games played by these men in 1924 as full internationals and present caps to the families of the players.

The games at issue are the ones played in the 1924 Olympic Games against Bulgaria and the Netherlands, as well as two post-Olympics friendly matches played against Estonia and the United States.

The logic appears to be that because no professional or semi-professional players were chosen for those teams, they were not full internationals. It is not a convincing position. Indeed, it was deeply unfair on those pioneers of Irish soccer.

What exactly happened?

The answer lies in the tangled history and politics of the early development of soccer in Ireland – and the battle for control of the game after the partition of Ireland.

That battle for control was between the Football Association of the Irish Free State – (later renamed the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and based in Dublin, and the Irish Football Association (IFA) based in Belfast.

The IFA – which controlled soccer in Ireland from the early 1880s onwards – was dominated