How a Manchester United player changed the Republic of Ireland team forever

Irish Times

05-05-2025

'The poor old [Duke of Wellington] what shall I say of him?' Daniel O'Connell once asked providing his own answer: 'To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.' The Liberator's words highlight that the link between birthplace and nationality in Ireland has long been influenced by both occupation and large-scale
emigration
. After all, many anthems speak of national liberation, but few give credit to heroes born abroad as Amhrán na bhFiann does.
Sixty years ago on Monday, at Dalymount Park in Dublin, Irish international football changed irrevocably. Few people watching the 1-0 victory over Spain on May 5th, 1965, could have known that Manchester-born Shay Brennan, who was among the green shirts for the first time that day, was to be the forerunner to more than 100 other international footballers born 'beyond the wave'.
The previous year,
Fifa
had overhauled the regulations concerning national teams' representation. Out went residence, in came citizenship. As the proposal read to the 1964 Fifa conference in Tokyo noted: 'A player who is a citizen of a country by virtue of his birth or by the nationality of his father ... is qualified to play in international or representative teams for that country.'
Just as importantly, footballers couldn't switch nations once they turned 18.
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While
Northern Ireland's Harry Cavan
spoke in Tokyo, the
FAI
's delegate – if present – was silent on the change, for all its subsequent importance. The news also failed to make any Irish newspaper pages. In Spain, now no longer able to cap three-time nation-hoppers such as Alfredo Di Stefano or László Kubala, things were different. However, as Andres Merce Varela of Barcelona's El Mundo Deportivo admitted, reform was needed, because switching countries had 'detracted from the idea of football between nations ...'.
Questions remain as to why the FAI had not previously sought players born abroad, given that the
IRFU
had long picked 'Anglos' and most Irish footballers played in Britain. Unofficially, there had been such players: Mick O'Brien, a journeyman born in Durham made four appearances for the Irish Free State between 1927 and 1932. One reason for the reluctance, perhaps, was a desire to avoid treading on the toes of the Football Association by taking 'their' players.
Manchester United's Shay Brennan taps the ball into Nottingham Forest's net as George Best looks on. Photograph: MSI/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Immediately after Tokyo, the FAI remained reluctant to search the English football league for Irish names. James Quinn claims in No Foreign Game that they ignored Matt Busby's initial tip-off about Brennan, because of what he believes was embarrassment at acknowledging Britain's hidden Irish community. Ultimately, FAI secretary Joe Wickham passed Brennan's name to the selectors, but not before tentatively contacting the FA to see whether he was likely to be called up by Alf Ramsey.
Slow progress continued. Fifa removed the discriminatory 'paternal' clause, and, in 1979, Londoner Chris Hughton became Ireland's first mixed-race player, qualifying to play for the country through his mother. This milestone was achieved before colonialist countries such as Spain or Belgium, while Hughton's debut coincided with the first time a majority of a Republic of Ireland starting XI was foreign-born.
As the 1980s arrived, Irish citizenship law allowed a shift to not just grandparents but great-grandparents. Michael Robinson, who proved the lack of Irish birth or close generational ties did not hamper commitment, told Marca in 2012: 'When I played with Ireland, I felt something more powerful than when I played with Liverpool. I felt that I was defending an important nation.' Mind you, weeks before his debut in Paris in October 1980, he had responded to the question in Match Weekly 'Who would you like to meet most?' with '[England manager] Ron Greenwood on business.'
And here lay a major problem with the 'granny rule': footballers were often accused of choosing Ireland more from their head than their heart. It seemed to confuse some onlookers that the likes of Andy Townsend, for example, could cheer for both Ireland and England. That simplistic view missed the point that being of mixed heritage meant that split loyalties were entirely natural, and not an issue for the player involved at all. It is very easy to cheer for more than one country if you have roots in more than one country.
Andy Townsend leading by example while serving as captain of the Republic of Ireland against the Netherlands at the 1994 World Cup. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/ALLSPORT
Some people insisted that any true exile of Erin would follow Tony Grealish, Eamon Dolan and Kevin Kilbane and take an Irish youth game over a full English cap any day. But if the default setting was to climb over the dead at the call to play for England, then consider the lengthy unseemly persuasion it took for
Jack Grealish
and
Declan Rice
to jump ship.
Qualification for Euro 88 brought the granny rule into the crosshairs of the English press. After Ireland beat England at that tournament, the Daily Mail's Jeff Powell led the charge, raging that England had lost to 'a bunch of international mercenaries recruited from their own First Division'. Many in the English media sought to undermine the Irish team's authenticity, and shoneen Irish journalists willingly joined in. But ultimately the foreign-born footballers brought a belated recognition of the diaspora in Ireland. Most Irish football fans are now aware that a significant number of their travelling companions are also foreign-born with foreign accents.
Perhaps the most significant feature of the granny rule is how other countries now use it, often with the same angst about commitment and damage to the local game. Albania has emerged recently as a more aggressive pursuer of qualified players than the FAI ever were. For Euro 2024, 69.23 per cent of its panel was foreign born, beating the 65 per cent of the Irish squad in 1988, although still below the 72.73 per cent for Italia 90.
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October 1975 was the last time a solely home-born Republic of Ireland men's team began a match – until 2020. A quarter of a century of little emigration has lessened the reliance on the granny rule, which has been so crucial to the story of Irish football. Conversely, immigration has brought the prospect of Ireland losing more players through ancestry to others. Indeed, the recent tussle with Albania over Kevin Zefi shows that we now have an Irish-born generation, coming of age, that may play for another 'land beyond the wave'.