The History of Dublin University Football Club. The History below is taken in it's entirety from "The Bold Collegians" by Trevor West. This is a history of all the clubs in Trinity, new and old. reproduced by kind permission.

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Football, which may have come to Ireland from Britain, was originally a peasant pastime based on the parish or village. It was unregulated and violent, and fatal accidents occurred during matches with alarming frequency. One challenge between neighbouring villages in Co. Derry read, 'for the Late Sleepers to come over on [a certain Sunday] and kick the Early Risers'. The Statutes of Galway (1527) forbade hurling and other sports 'except alone football with the grate ball'. Literary references indicate that football was played in north Co. Dublin in the late seventeenth century. The poet Matthew Concanen, writing in 1720 the celebrate the victory of his native village, Swords, over neighbouring Lusk, reveals that the ball was made of oxhide 'stuffed with the finest hay'; the goals consisted of boughs of sallywood bent into a bow; the ball could be caught and kicked in the air, kicked and rushed along the ground, or carried; and tripping and wrestling, while not strictly legal, yet fell within the spirit of the game. In some parts of the country this game was known by its Irish name of caid.

As local matches so often resulted in riot and disorder, the game was regularly declared illegal (Edward II banned football in London in 1314!). Not, however, until Sir Robert Peel organised his police force in England in 1829 was the law regularly enforced; the peelers then cracked down on the undisciplined brand of football prevalent in England, just as a more disciplined code, or codes, had begun to develop in the public schools.

Although William Webb Ellis (who, in 1823, caught the ball and ran with it in a game at Rugby School) is regarded as the progenitor of modern rugby, the spread of the game owes more to Thomas Arnold, the celebrated though controversial headmaster of the school from 1828 to 1842. There is little evidence that Arnold himself was interested in football, although he plays the role of benevolent spectator in the account of the famous Bogside match in Tom Brown's Schooldays, but the account is based on an original written by W.D. Arnold, son of the headmaster. In any case Arnold would have been shrewd enough to discern the advantages of organised sports, such as cricket and football, compared with the drinking, bullying, gambling and poaching that were standard diversions in the public schools of his day.

Many of Arnold's protégés obtained headships, and his influence on the public school system was such that the code of football then practised at Rugby was implanted in schools such as Cheltenham, Marlborough and Rossall. The style of education attributed to Arnold was based on Christian values, character building, a system onf accountability for boys and masters, and Plato's Hellenic ideal of mens sana in Corpore sano; as this became the model for the Victorian public school, so the rugby gospel spread through those who had served under him . Eton, Charterhouse and Westminister, however, practised another code in which handling was not permitted, leading to the development of association football or soccer. top of page

Football in Trinity certainly pre-dates the foundation of the Football Club in 1854. A poem of Edward Lysaght's, published in 1811, is evidence that football was played in the College Park regularly in the 1780s:

The poem was published with an accompanying footnote:
At the time when Ned Lysaght was in Trinity College [c. 1780] the fellow-commoners considered themselves superior beings to the pensioners; and of course they were above taking any part in the amusement of football which was then played every evening in the College Park. It so happened that a pensioner whose name was C-lf-ld, had been vain enough to associate entirely with fellow-commoners, and, of course, never deigned to play at football, until one evening when he accidentally condescended to do so; scarcely had he made the attempt, when some of his fellow students (pensioners) indignant at his past folly, soon tripped up his heels, to the no small gratification of the whole assemblage then present, but to the mortification of C-lf-ld and his companions.

The first formal record of the university club, indicating that it had been in existance for at least a year, appears under the heading 'Trinity College' in the Daily Express of 1 December 1855:

FOOT BALL. - A match will be played in the College Park today (Saturday) between original and new members of the club. Play to commence at two o'clock College time.

For a number of years afterwards, all fixtures were internecine struggles between Internals and Externals, Fair Hair and Dark Hair, Sophisters and the Field, the Football Club and the Boat Club, Cheltenham boys or Royal Schools versus the Rest, or Graduates and Senior Sophisters versus the Minor Classes. Football in Trinity also clearly pre-dates any distinctions between the Rugby, Association and (much later) Gaelic codes. The first external fixture took place against Wanderers - possibly a team consisting of former DUFC members - in 1860 (the well-known Dublin club of that name was not founded until 1870). DUFC pioneered the handling game in Ireland. The Irish Times of 28 October 1867 records that in three matches against the military, although the University out of courtesy to the strangers, at first played contrary to the custom by the Eton rules, they succeeded in holding their own in one of the first two matches, and were only beaten after a close contest in the other. In the third match in which Rugby game was played they won an easy victory. top of page

In any case the 1854 foundation date gives Trinity a substantial claim to be the oldest rugby club in continuous existence. Guy's Hospital FC, which was founded in London in 1843 and played its football initially on Kennington Oval, is certainly older, but went into abeyance for some years in the nineteenth century.

Traill was an early stalwart of the Football Club, as were Arthur Palmer, a fellow and distinguished Latinist; the mathematician and Celtic scholar Charles Graves, a fellow until consecrated Bishop of Limerick in 1866; and Grave's three sons, Alfred, Arnold, and Charles. Alfred was a collector of Irish music and the composer of 'Father O'Flynn', while Arnold was an international cricketer, a champion hurdler, and a leading proponent of technical education in Ireland. But the most remarkable of the pioneers, and the one who deserves to be known as the father of Irish rugby, was Charles Burton Barrington, who captained the club for three years from 1867 to 1870.

Barrington's uncle, Charles West , was a footballer, and it is possible that he influenced the game in the university. 'Charley West', wrote Barrington,'was at Rugby and is the "East" in Tom Brown's Schooldays. He might have had a hand in it, but he would have been before 1850.' Giving his own early reactions to football in Trinity, Barrington remarked: 'When this Rugbean went out to play in the [College] Park for the first time the game may have seemed to him peculiar but it never occurred to him that it was anything else than Rugby of sorts.' He retained this impression although 'the whole thing was very loose, two fellows were made heads, Tossed for first choice and then picked their team from the bystanders who happened to turn up.'

Barrington had been introduced to football at St Columba's College, where we played a sort of soccer game. On one afternoon a man called Strickland appeared and played in our game. He belonged to the T.C.D. football club, we heard, but who brought him the boys did not know. He played as we did. On making a catch, though, he ran with the ball, but when collared and downed would not let the ball go. Our big boys had difficulty in getting it from him. This incident would show that T.C.D. did run with the ball in 1859. Anyhow our Masters made him drop it ...... top of page

While on holiday from his English public school in 1863, Barrington had played a match in Merrion square with several other Rugbeans who were in Dublin, but it was not a success. Having completed his schooling he entered Trinity in January 1867, where, he discovered, things were not as they should have been, for there were 'no cycles, no golf, no hockey, no anything,' only card-playing, billiards, whiskey-drinking, and a stilted social life. There was, however, a little desultory football, with no particular rules to speak [of], or kit. A good little chap called Wall was running the show. I started away and pulled things together, made a good club out of it with the rules of Rugby School, and we were very successful for it caught on at once. I have a photo of our First XV by me, and we are a queer-looking lot judged by modern ideas. We had caps made in Rugby too, but there was no-one in those far-off times to play against. The match of the year was against the Medical School. Sometimes too the Dublin Garrison boiled up a team to play us ... We played matches among ourselves, 'pick up' twice or three times a week ... The Club was really a great success and did introduce the Rugger game into Ireland.

Barrington goes on to describe how he and the secretary, R.M. Wall (whose father, Rev. F.H. Wall, was headmaster on another early rugby nursery, Arlington School, Portarlington), Tackled the problems of dress and rules:

The club had no rules, written or unwritten. The[y] just played and ran with the ball, no touch line, no goal lines, our only parpanalia [sic] being the Rugby goal posts. These were all sufficient for the simple tastes of those days in Dublin Football. A Rugbean brought in the new idea of Rules. Rugby [School] itself though had no written rules!... They were traditional, like the British Constitution or the Secrets of Free Masonry.

In fact Rugby School had produced written rules in 1846, and a further set had been drawn up by Blackheath FC, one of the earliest of English clubs, founded in 1862. But when Barrington a nd Wall met to draw up rules in the secretary's rooms in Botany Bay early in 1868, The Rugby School tradition was paramount: 'Wall sat gravely at his little table. A small dark wiry hardy chap with a short back beard and kindly dark eyes. He wrote and I dictated. Gradually and gradually as one could remember them the unwritten laws govern the immortal Rugby game were put on paper.' It is interesting to observe how the pattern of the modern game was already established by 1868:

D.U. LAWS OF FOOTBALL

• The kick-off from the middle of must be a place-kick.
• Kick-out must be from 25 yards out of goal, not a place-kick.
• Charging is fair in case of a place-kick, as soon as the ball has touched the ground; in case of a kick from a catch as soon as the player offers to kick, but he may always draw back, unless he has touched the ball with his foot.
• If a player makes a Fair Catch, he shall be entitled to a free kick, provided he claims it, by making a mark with his heel at once; and in order to take such kick he may go back as far as he pleases, and no player on the opposite side shall advance beyond his mark until he has kicked.
• A Fair Catch cannot be made from Touch.
• A Player is off side when the ball has been kicked, thrown or knocked on, or is being run with by one of his own side behind him.

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