Kevin Mallonwrites that today's European Championship qualifier against Wales is not the first international soccer match to be played at Jones's Road.
International soccer was first played at Jones's Road in May 1896 when two women's teams, one representing Ireland and Scotland combined and the other representing England, lined out in opposition at the famous northside venue.
The match was part of Lady Florence Dixie's British Ladies Football Club tour of Ireland and with the women's game then in its infancy (in spite of some male involvement) the contest also merits consideration as the world's first women's soccer international.
The decision, taken some 30 years earlier (1863) to standardise Association Football rules had proved especially significant for women's football. For the first time, with the rough and tumble largely removed from the game, organised women's soccer became a genuine possibility.
It was almost a generation later before the women's game became established and when it did, as with the men's game, it was a mostly middle-class phenomenon, closely related to the ever growing calls for greater equality of opportunity for women.
Matches between married and unmarried teams of women had reportedly taken place in Mid-Lothian in the 1790s so it was probably only natural that the first properly organised women's game took place in Scotland, at Shawfields in Glasgow in 1892.
Scottish Sport'scorrespondent was not at all impressed, regarding the game as, "the most degrading spectacle we have ever witnessed in connection with football."
In spite of press hostility the women's game soon took hold in the Hornsey area of London where in the winter of 1894-95 a group of some 50 women came together to form the British Ladies Football Club (BLFC).
The club secretary and indeed its main driving force was the almost too appropriately named, Miss Nettie J Honeyball. Her stated aim in founding the club was to prove to the world, "that women are not the ornamental and useless creatures men have pictured."
Recognising the club's need for a high profile figurehead she persuaded one of Britain and Ireland's best known women, Lady Florence Dixie (a sister of boxing rules' Marquis of Queensberry) to accept the position of Club President.
Lady Florence Dixie was a poet, a war correspondent, a travel writer and a champion of women's rights but it was for the sensational events of March 16th, 1883, that she was best known in Ireland.
That afternoon near her home close to Windsor she claimed to have been attacked and stabbed by two men disguised as women, her life only being saved when the steel stays of her corset deflected the life threatening blows.
Florence Dixie supported Home Rule for Ireland but her well-documented attacks on the administration of Land League funds and the fact that a Fenian bombing campaign was then under way in London, meant the British press was quick to blame Fenian sympathisers for the apparent "men dressed in women's clothes" assassination attempt.
Ironically, the day before the reported attack The Irish Timeshad received the significant sum of £220 from Florence Dixie (given to her by Madame de Noailles) to be passed on to severely distressed areas of Donegal, in particular Killybegs and St John's Point.
A few days later, in a letter to The Irish Times, she disassociated herself from suggestions of an Irish connection stating that she had "laid the blame of this attempt to murder or intimidate . . . to no one's door" and had no reason to link it "with the name of Irishmen or Ireland."
No one was ever arrested or charged and in subsequent days serious doubts were raised in the British House of Commons about the truthfulness of her dramatic claims. Even so the case made newspaper headlines the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland. She even adorned the front cover of Vanity Fair.
So the news 13 years later that Lady Florence Dixie's British Ladies Football Club was to play in Dublin excited an enormous amount of publicity. The BLFC had played its first match in March 1895 in Couch End in London.
A crowd of 10,000 turned up to see what The Sketchdescribed as the players wandering "aimlessly over the field at a very ungraceful trot".
Over the next 12 months the BLFC toured extensively. The huge attendances which marked the opening games gradually declined until by the end of April 1896 when only up to 400 turned up for a match in Newcastle, the decision was taken to embark upon a short tour of Ireland.
The opening match was fixed for Saturday, May 16th, 1896, at the City and Suburban grounds on Jones's Road but the Dublin public was in for a major disappointment.
The night before the match was due to be played Advance Agent AH Smith (manager of the National Skating Palace in London) received a telegram from Holyhead. "Smith Dublin. Missed boat, arriving Saturday evening."
With commercial disaster looming, Maurice Butterly, manager and director of the Jones's Road grounds, acted quickly. The BLFC event was rescheduled for the following Monday and Tuesday evenings, the games being billed as triangular internationals with Ireland and Scotland in opposition to England.
By kick-off time, 6.30pm on Monday, May 18th, the Evening Telegraphreported an enormous crowd, mostly men, assembled at Jones's Road with, "the stands . . . fully filled." The band of the 15th Huzzars provided a musical backdrop as the teams warmed-up in the normal BLFC colours, Ireland and Scotland in red, England in blue.
The ladies uniforms, which Sportdescribed as "very picturesque", included loose blouses with short frocks over serge knickerbockers, long stockings and high laced boots. As was the fashion, shin-guards were worn outside the stockings. Tiny cricket caps or berettas pinned "coquettishly among the thick coils of their hair" completed their attire.
The game, refereed by AH Smith, consisted of two 30-minute halves. The grass was somewhat long and wet but even so the women, some of whom seemed to be no more than children, "acquitted themselves well" and it was soon clear that many of those "who came to scoff remained to praise".
On the down side, it was generally agreed that it was a mistake to use "gentlemen" goalkeepers, one of whom wore a long Ulster overcoat throughout. Ireland and Scotland won the game by three goals to two.
So successful was the venture that a farewell game was then fixed for the following Saturday (May 23rd) with 11 of the British Ladies Football Club up against a team of Dublin Gentlemen's XI selected by Irish International ED Morrogh of Bohemians.
The BLFC had already beaten a men's team in Cardiff in 1895 so a keen contest was expected. The Freeman's Journal, however, expressed doubts about the competitive nature of the event believing that "the gallantry of the gentlemen would not permit them to defeat their opponents".
Depending on the report the game ended either in a 2-2 draw or a 5-2 win for the women for whom Miss Baldwin, "a vivacious young Irishwoman", Miss L Yates in goal, Miss Newton and the team captain Miss S Yates were the pick.
Not content with their Jones's Road success, the BLFC then travelled on to Drogheda where at Shamrock Lodge on Friday, May 29th, another enormous crowd watched Ireland and Scotland beat England by two goals to nil.
Clearly unimpressed the Drogheda Independentcommented, "we are not yet educated up to the standard of the new woman and it is to be hoped that it may be long until we are."
In the same edition, a letter signed Pro Bono Publico, followed a remarkably similar line, "The New Woman, the product of modern irreligion is coming into our midst with a vengeance. If we are to preserve Christianity in Ireland we ought to get rid as quickly as possible of these 'ladies' and send them back to their own country."
That same week at Saracen Park in Glasgow another team of women footballers was the victim of a much worse form of attack when a mob, several thousand strong, surrounded them after a game.
The windows of the cabs bringing the women from the field were broken. Several people were injured by stones and other missiles and amid distressing scenes of violence the police were forced to baton charge the crowd.
The Glasgow incident marked a huge setback for the women's game and the turn of the century brought more bad news. In 1902 the FA imposed a ban on "mixed" matches, a decision which effectively brought down the curtain on the first golden age of women's soccer.
Kevin Mallon teaches at St Patrick's Classical School in Navan and is a commentator for Setanta Sports.
