Football, be it Gaelic, rugby or soccer is unquestionably the
most popular team sport in Ireland. Each week thousands play at sports
venues throughout the island and many more look on and cheer. The exploits
of players and teams at Dublin's Croke Park and Lansdowne Road or Belfast's
Windsor Park, Ravenhill and Casement Park have all entered popular myth and
legend.

Yet all this sporting success and enthusiasm has developed comparatively
recently and from very humble beginnings. Surprisingly, the modern codes of
Gaelic, Rugby and Association football in Ireland are little more than a
century old. They share common roots in traditional folk games and in the
cult of athleticism that gripped the country in the later decades of the
nineteenth century.

R. M. Peter's pioneering Irish Football Annual was published in 1880, at a
crucial juncture in the development of Irish football in all its forms.
Reproduced here, it provides voluminous detail on more than 600 players and
50 clubs of the time: it is a mine of information for the sports
enthusiast, the historian and the genealogist alike.

Peter's valuable work is placed in a wider historical perspective by Neal
Garnham's fascinating introduction which outlines the development and early
growth of all three of Ireland's footballing codes, from their origins
until after the First World War. The outcome is an engrossing and
entertaining story of the early years of soccer, rugby and Gaelic football
in Ireland and their place in the wider world of sport and society.