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St Patrick's Athletic F.C.
St Patrick's Athletic Football Club, commonly known as Pat's or The Saints, is a professional Irish association football club based in Inchicore, Dublin, that plays in the League of Ireland Premier Division. Founded in May 1929, they played originally in Phoenix Park but they moved to their current ground of Richmond Park in 1939.
St Patrick's Athletic have won many trophies in Irish Club Football, including eight League Titles, the fifth most in Irish Football, as well as five FAI Cups and four League Cups.
The club graduated through the ranks of the Leinster Senior League and duly took their place in the League of Ireland in 1951, and won the Championship at their first attempt. The club's glory years came in the 1950s and 1990s when they won 6 of their 8 league titles. Along with Bohemians, they are one of only two teams to never have been relegated from the Premier Division. The club play in red and white colours and their nicknames include the Saints, Supersaints and Pats. The Saints also have a lot of Dublin Derby games with the likes of Shelbourne, Shamrock Rovers, and Bohemians.
Football in Inchicore dates back to at least 1898. There had been several previous local clubs called St Patrick's and St Patrick's Athletic, as well as clubs associated with the Inchicore railway works, the Great Southern Railways (also known as the GSR). The more recent of these, GSR FC, started around 1927. They played in the Athletic Union League at first, with their home ground at Bluebell, although most of their games from then on were played in the Inchicore Works or "Pond Field" with others at Richmond Park and Chapelizod.
GSR fielded two teams in 1929-30; an "A" team in the Leinster League Division Two, and a "B" team in the AUL Division One. GSR's B team seems to have been dropped for the following season, 1930-31. It is possible that the demands of senior football were such that they did not want to take on a second team, or perhaps belt-tightening at the recently-consolidated company was taking hold.
Around this time, GSR were approached by a group of young footballers asking them to take on a second team. These included Pat Dunphy, who gave a first-hand account of the formation of the club in an interview in 1989.
Along with six of his fellow teenage friends who worked at the GSR, Pat states that they asked the company to take on a second team of younger players. "We were looking for them to take us over and they refused us on a couple of occasions. They (GSR) wouldn't have anything to do with it. They were a big team, we wanted to go in with a smaller team. They were playing in the Leinster League. The GSR team had players around 20 at this time. I was about 16."
After the GSR had refused to take the new team on, the teenage friends held what would prove to be a historic meeting, which resulted in the founding of the club. "The following week we had a meeting down in McDowell's (a pub located on Emmett Road alongside Richmond Park). Mr McDowell was a very decent man and was always very good to us. We decided to go into the bottom league, which was the Intermediate League. I was asked to go down to Parnell Square and look up the people who were running these Leagues. I went down and paid the entrance fee and they sent us word the following week that we'd be in the Intermediate League. The fee was only small - around a guinea (one pound and one shilling) - and we all bunched in to pay."
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St Patrick's Athletic F.C.
St Patrick's Athletic Football Club, commonly known as Pat's or The Saints, is a professional Irish association football club based in Inchicore, Dublin, that plays in the League of Ireland Premier Division. Founded in May 1929, they played originally in Phoenix Park but they moved to their current ground of Richmond Park in 1939.
St Patrick's Athletic have won many trophies in Irish Club Football, including eight League Titles, the fifth most in Irish Football, as well as five FAI Cups and four League Cups.
The club graduated through the ranks of the Leinster Senior League and duly took their place in the League of Ireland in 1951, and won the Championship at their first attempt. The club's glory years came in the 1950s and 1990s when they won 6 of their 8 league titles. Along with Bohemians, they are one of only two teams to never have been relegated from the Premier Division. The club play in red and white colours and their nicknames include the Saints, Supersaints and Pats. The Saints also have a lot of Dublin Derby games with the likes of Shelbourne, Shamrock Rovers, and Bohemians.
Football in Inchicore dates back to at least 1898. There had been several previous local clubs called St Patrick's and St Patrick's Athletic, as well as clubs associated with the Inchicore railway works, the Great Southern Railways (also known as the GSR). The more recent of these, GSR FC, started around 1927. They played in the Athletic Union League at first, with their home ground at Bluebell, although most of their games from then on were played in the Inchicore Works or "Pond Field" with others at Richmond Park and Chapelizod.
GSR fielded two teams in 1929-30; an "A" team in the Leinster League Division Two, and a "B" team in the AUL Division One. GSR's B team seems to have been dropped for the following season, 1930-31. It is possible that the demands of senior football were such that they did not want to take on a second team, or perhaps belt-tightening at the recently-consolidated company was taking hold.
Around this time, GSR were approached by a group of young footballers asking them to take on a second team. These included Pat Dunphy, who gave a first-hand account of the formation of the club in an interview in 1989.
Along with six of his fellow teenage friends who worked at the GSR, Pat states that they asked the company to take on a second team of younger players. "We were looking for them to take us over and they refused us on a couple of occasions. They (GSR) wouldn't have anything to do with it. They were a big team, we wanted to go in with a smaller team. They were playing in the Leinster League. The GSR team had players around 20 at this time. I was about 16."
After the GSR had refused to take the new team on, the teenage friends held what would prove to be a historic meeting, which resulted in the founding of the club. "The following week we had a meeting down in McDowell's (a pub located on Emmett Road alongside Richmond Park). Mr McDowell was a very decent man and was always very good to us. We decided to go into the bottom league, which was the Intermediate League. I was asked to go down to Parnell Square and look up the people who were running these Leagues. I went down and paid the entrance fee and they sent us word the following week that we'd be in the Intermediate League. The fee was only small - around a guinea (one pound and one shilling) - and we all bunched in to pay."