David Butler
Yesterday I had a general chat with Darren Frehill and Damien O'Meara on RTE’s Sunday Sport programme (starting at approx. 3.14) about the impact of the globalising labour markets (for Irish footballers) and inter-generational career trajectories (for Irish footballers). In addition, we spoke about Ireland’s Rugby World Cup bid.
On the former issue one question that arose was whether there are now less Irish players playing in the first tier of English football due to the internationalisation of the competition and the increasingly competitive labour market.
The points and charts below reveal some of the key information from 1992/1993 to 2014/2015 for Irish players in the Premier League.
Yesterday I had a general chat with Darren Frehill and Damien O'Meara on RTE’s Sunday Sport programme (starting at approx. 3.14) about the impact of the globalising labour markets (for Irish footballers) and inter-generational career trajectories (for Irish footballers). In addition, we spoke about Ireland’s Rugby World Cup bid.
On the former issue one question that arose was whether there are now less Irish players playing in the first tier of English football due to the internationalisation of the competition and the increasingly competitive labour market.
The points and charts below reveal some of the key information from 1992/1993 to 2014/2015 for Irish players in the Premier League.
- The most Irish players to be contracted to Premier League clubs in any one season was 46 in 1996/1997. The joint lowest amount was 28 (Fig 1.)
- The trend in the number of Irish in the Premier League is cyclical, spiking in the mid 90's, early 00's and early 10's.
- Since 1970 the pool of Irish International players has grown from approximately 34 in 1970 to 72 in 2015. This has increased the number of ‘top tier’ players absolutely, but not proportionally, since approximately 1985.
- The clubs these players are contracted to have altered, with far more Irish players now contracted to traditionally lower ranked clubs and generally participating in more loan moves during their career.
- Irish talent is still preferred to that of other British Isles countries. For the vast majority of the Premier League, there has been more Irish players in the Premier League when compared to Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish. Scotland and Wales both saw a downward trend in their numbers since 1992/1993. This has reversed since 2008/2009 for Scottish players and since 2010/2011 for the Welsh (Fig 2.)
Fig 1. The number of Irish players in the EPL by season 1992-2015
In terms of the international team and the selection of domestically based players, the number of League of Ireland footballers in the international setup has fallen from 14 in 1970 (approx. 40% of the squad) to the inclusion of 5 or fewer since 1990. The key turning point was seen during the reign of Eoin Hand, where the international team switched to be one where most call-ups were born in the UK. Perhaps, the major psychological shift could even be traced earlier when the Manchester-born Shay Brennan was the first non-domestically born player to be called into the Irish squad in 1965.
Under the control of John Giles and Liam Tuohy the international team was largely compiled of Dublin born players. Eoin Hand changed this. Jack Charlton then became famous for actively courting and recruiting UK-born Irish by exploiting the ‘granny rule’ and making us more competitive internationally. As they say, the rest is history.
Under the control of John Giles and Liam Tuohy the international team was largely compiled of Dublin born players. Eoin Hand changed this. Jack Charlton then became famous for actively courting and recruiting UK-born Irish by exploiting the ‘granny rule’ and making us more competitive internationally. As they say, the rest is history.
Fig 2. EPL Imports from the British Isles 1992-2015
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