The Football History Boys

Last weekend saw the start of the Six Nations and an opening tie between Wales and Ireland. As ever the atmosphere around my home city of Cardiff was incredible - no doubt the same across the Irish Sea in Dublin. In fact Dublin has had a lot to be cheerful for over the past year following the Republic's football team qualifying for Euro 2016 alongside England, Wales and its neighbour across the border to the North. Watching the rugby however was what prompted the start of this piece - as both Northern and Republic came together to compete side-by-side on Saturday. Irish sport indeed sees its roots deep in a mixture of social and political constraints - but why? Here at TFHB, we tend to focus the great deal of our writing on British sport and its intriguing history. Of course 'the Republic of Ireland is not part of Britain' I hear you say....but until 1921 it was and it is in these earliest years that the next 90 years of Irish sport were to be set out - sometimes for the

It's quickly becoming a more reasonable hope that we might find ourselves with a new Premier League champion at the end of the season. Seeing as only five separate teams have ever taken home the title, it seemed fitting to provide some history about the teams that have won the title. In 1992, the Premier League replaced the Football League First Division as the top flight of English football. The modern-day Premier League has been dominated by the same crew of six or so clubs since the turn of the millennium. Even among those, only a scant few have ever taken the title. Manchester United has won the league a record 13 times while Chelsea has the second-most titles with four. Behind them are Arsenal with three, Manchester City with two and Blackburn Rovers with one. As with most stories, the best place to start is at the beginning. For our tale, that's the 1992-93 season and the beginning of the continued dominance of Manchester United. The inaugural Premier League season

In September I started my PGCE course with the view of qualifying to become a primary school teacher. In fact, it was one of our 'P.E.' training days which inspired this piece. During a workshop on the subject a great deal of the learning was done with footballs and volleyballs in order to generate an idea of what could be done which each apparatus - throwing, catching and of course kicking. Within a few minutes a fair number of the students, myself included, were doing keep-ups, passing and shooting into an imaginary goal, leaving one coursemate a little baffled - she asked me, "why do people love football so much!?" - which got me thinking...why indeed? Over the last three years since we set up The Football History Boys - Gareth and I seemed to have each focused on specific eras of the game's illustrious past, with the Victorian era being one of certain intrigue. So this is where we begin, with the games origins - did people love it from the start? The simple