‘Shamrock Rovers XI versus Brazil: The day Irish football united to take on the world champions

Fifty years ago today, on July 3rd, 1973, a football team comprising players from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland played as a ‘Shamrock Rovers XI’ versus the-then world champions Brazil.

A crowd of 34,000 watched on as Brazil beat the makeshift all-Ireland team 4-3 in what was considered a thrilling free-flowing game of football at Lansdowne Road.

Given that the game was held during the darkest period of the Troubles, it was a hugely symbolic gesture that spawned talks later that year between the Irish Football Association (IFA) and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to see if the by-then 52-year-old split in Irish soccer could be healed.

The man behind the plan was Louis Kilcoyne, owner at the time, with his family, of Shamrock Rovers. On tour with the FAI in Brazil in 1972, Kilcoyne asked the president of the Brazilian Sports Confederation Joao Havelange to include Ireland in the Brazilian team’s tour of Europe and North Africa scheduled for the summer of 1973.

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Kilcoyne promised the FAI’s vote to Havelange, who was aiming to become Fifa president in 1974, if Brazil came to Dublin and boldly committed to fielding an all-Ireland team. Havelange agreed, stating it would be the ‘match of the tour’ for Brazil.

Kilcoyne’s promise to bring an all-Ireland team together was made in 1972, the worst years of the Troubles, when almost 500 people were killed violently. It was the year of Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, and the fall of Stormont. Football did not escape the Troubles either. Derry City withdrew from the Irish Football League in 1972 and the Northern Ireland football team was unable to play any home fixtures in Belfast from 1971 until 1975.

Kilcoyne convinced the captains of the two Irish teams, John Giles and Derek Dougan, to bring his dream to fruition. Giles was his brother-in-law after all. Dougan needed little convincing either, a firm advocate, right up to his death in 2007, of fielding an all-Ireland team in football.

Giles and Dougan, along with the manager of the team, Liam Tuohy, selected the players from both Irish jurisdictions. While the Brazil team was battled-hardened after already playing eight international matches before coming to Dublin, it was off-season for the Irish players, with many of them on holidays.

Although some were on holidays close-by, Giles was in Wexford, others were unwilling to forego their holidays in more exotic locations. John Dempsey went to Barbados, Dave Clements to the Seychelles. Players who would have made the Irish team were also injured.

There was some scepticism over Steve Heighway’s withdrawal with a knee injury after training at Liverpool, having pulled out of the Republic of Ireland’s most recent World Cup qualifiers, complaining of being ‘too tired’.

The selectors were still able to pick a strong team, almost equally divided between North and South – Pat Jennings, David Craig, Alan Hunter, Martin O’Neill and Derek Dougan from the North; Tommy Carroll, Paddy Mulligan, John Giles, Mick Martin, Terry Conroy and Don Givens from the South. Brian Hamilton and Liam O’Kane from the North and Miah Dennehy from the South came on as substitutes during the match.

Dougan and Kilcoyne were hopeful of attracting the biggest star of Irish football, George Best, to play for the all-Ireland team, but his career at Manchester United was unravelling at the time.

Hospitalised earlier in the year, the United manager Tommy Docherty confirmed before the match that Best would not be able to play as he was in breach of his contract with the club.

In his book, How Not to Run Football, Dougan claimed that Best “would not have gone off the rails” if there had been an all-Ireland side. Best, like Dougan, was a Protestant from East Belfast. While Best’s father was a member of the Orange Order, neither Dougan nor his father were members of the Order. Both Dougan and Best were firm believers in an all-Ireland football team, primarily for footballing reasons.

Dougan was in no doubt that vested interests, particularly from the IFA and its president Harry Cavan, were the main reasons why the split remained. Dougan claimed Cavan went to great lengths to have the match against Brazil cancelled. He also claimed that he never played for Northern Ireland afterwards as he was the main organiser, on the northern side, of the match against Brazil.

While Cavan was unsuccessful in having the game called off, it only went ahead after the Irish team changed its name to a ‘Shamrock Rovers XI’ and wore the club’s colours instead of green Irish colours used by both Irish international teams on Cavan’s insistence.

There was much excitement in the build-up to the match in Dublin with big demand for tickets. Agreement was reached with the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) to allow for the match to be played at Lansdowne Road. International soccer matches at the time were still primarily played at Dalymount Park.

Unaware of Ireland’s sporting politics, the Brazil team had hoped the venue for the match would be the largest stadium in Ireland, Croke Park. The GAA had only removed its ban on its members playing or supporting “foreign games” two years previously and did not allow Croke Park to be used as a venue for such sports until three decades later, in 2007.

There was a carnival atmosphere in Lansdowne Road on the evening of July 3rd as 34,000 listened to the St Patrick’s Brass and Reed Band play A Nation Once Again as the two teams took to the field. RTÉ provided live television coverage of the match, with the Nuacht sandwiched between both halves.

The match itself was a thrilling affair involving seven goals, a penalty save, shots hitting the woodwork, and end-to-end attacks throughout from both sides. Although the Brazilian team, which included World Cup stars such as Jairzinho, Rivelino and Paulo Cesar, were 4-1 up after the 61st minute, the makeshift Irish team (some who had only met each other for the first time 24 hours earlier) rallied and brought the score back to 4-3 by the end. The Irish scorers were Mick Martin, Derek Dougan and Terry Conroy.

Newspaper headlines the next day told their own story; IRISH ARE UNITED, BRAZILIANS ROCKED BY UNITED IRISHMEN, ALL IRELAND ALL HEART and one from the Derry Journal declaring, STUPIDITY OF TWO SOCCER IRELANDS SPOTLIGHTED. For many of the journalists reporting on the match, it was a clarion call for an all-Ireland team.

While the FAI had commissioned a report on problems besetting Irish football, published in May 1973, recommending “that the possibility of fielding an All-Ireland team be examined”, the Brazil match added momentum to the calls for the FAI and IFA to reunite.

Immediately after the match, Bohemians delegate Eddie Halpin suggested at an FAI Council meeting that the FAI approach the IFA to arrange for all-Ireland teams to play friendly internationals.

Donegal-based club Finn Harps revealed its plans to organise an all-Ireland selection to play against either West Germany or England the following summer. Shamrock Rovers accepted an invitation from Brazil to bring an all-Ireland team to Rio de Janeiro in May 1974.

The FAI subsequently sent the IFA a letter requesting a meeting “to discuss matters of mutual interest”, a meeting the IFA unanimously agreed to attend. At that conference, held in Belfast on October 2nd, “a very lengthy and amicable discussion” was held, in stark contrast to many of the failed talks attempts between both associations in years past.

Another meeting took place in Dublin in January 1974. The talks then ultimately failed over the IFA looking for the FAI to amalgamate back into the IFA, something the southern body was unwilling to do.

A further seven meetings were held between the FAI and IFA from 1977 to 1980 about the possibility of fielding one international team for the island. And although Harry Cavan claimed at the 1979 IFA AGM that “two teams in a small country like this was nonsensical”, and the IFA’s secretary Billy Drennan, likewise, “agreed that both Irish bodies should be working towards an all-Ireland side”, the IFA appeared to be paying lip-service to the goal of an all-Ireland team, dwelling instead on the obstacles of finance, security, and whether Fifa would allow for such an arrangement involving two different political entities, instead of looking for solutions.

What little chance there was of unity was partly killed by success, firstly of the Northern Ireland team in the early 1980s and then of the Republic of Ireland team from the late-1980s onwards.

Many of the players still harboured hopes for an all-Ireland team. Players such as Dougan, Giles, O’Neill and Best, far more outspoken than current professional footballers, believed an all-Ireland team could achieve far more than two Irish teams on the island.

After all, a makeshift all-Ireland team had run the great Brazilian team close. Who knows what such a team could have achieved if it was competing regularly in World Cup and European Championship tournaments?

Dr Cormac Moore is an historian-in-residence with Dublin City Council and is author of Birth of the Border: The Impact of Partition in Ireland (Merrion Press, 2019) and The Irish Soccer Split (Cork University Press, 2015). He will be taking part in a panel discussion to mark the 50th anniversary of the match at the Little Museum of Dublin at 6pm on Monday, July 3rd along with Football History Walking Tour organisers Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD and Gary Cooke, as well as former Irish international Paddy Mulligan who played in the match.