Irish Football Clubs in Liverpool: Why There Were no Liverpool Celtics or Everton Hibernians

Most football fans and historians are familiar with the foundation of football clubs by the Catholic Irish settling in British towns and cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A number of these clubs were set up on a professional basis and survive in one capacity or another to this day. In Scotland, Glasgow Celtic and Hibernian are the more illustrious examples of such clubs, but there were also Irish teams in Dundee (Dundee Hibernian, Dundee Harp) and Dundee United are the direct descendent of these. In Northern Ireland too, in what would today be called 'the Nationalist community', football clubs such as Belfast Celtic and Derry Celtic were founded. In England, however (and despite settling in great and concentrated numbers in urban areas), the Irish diaspora did not create a serious challenger to 'native' football clubs with the same level of impact or success. Clubs were formed but their legacy, in terms of creating a separate identity to their hosts, is weak. This short book takes a look at one English city, Liverpool, and asks why - in an English city many identify as having had a particularly significant Irish presence and Irish influence upon its development - ethnically Irish football clubs failed to be sustained there.