James Quinn (Dictionary of Irish Biography), 'Irish soccer and the rhetoric of unity, 1973-93: where did it all go wrong?' (26/02/24)

Dr James Quinn joined the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) project in 1995 and played a key role in its landmark launch in 2009. In 2012 James became the DIB's Managing Editor, a role he held until his retirement in July 2022. In addition to writing more than 270 DIB entries, his research interests mainly focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish history. He has written books on the United Irishman Thomas Russell (2002), the Young Irelander John Mitchel (2008), and published Young Ireland and the writing of Irish history in 2015, as well as contributing to journals and collections on aspects of political and cultural history, biography and historiography.
His most recent book, No Foreign Game: Association Football and the Making of Irish Identities, was published by Irish Academic Press in 2023. From its earliest days, Association Football was seen not just as a contest between individuals and teams, but also between nations and peoples. The Irish national team was among the first in the world to participate in international competition in the early 1880s, but not everyone accepted it as a truly national entity. Sport in Ireland was disputed ground – even the term ‘football’ itself was a contested one. But soccer followers generally found no contradiction between their sporting and national loyalties, and the game found an important niche in Irish life, supported by many leading nationalists, from James Connolly to John Hume. Carefully weaving together political, social, cultural and sporting history, No Foreign Game tells a story not just of division and conflict, but also one of solidarity and celebration, and in doing so it breaks new ground in the history of Irish sport.

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