The island of Ireland is a place where history casts a particularly long shadow.
So perhaps I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am that so few people seem to know about a proud episode in the island’s footballing history that took place 99 years ago.
I first stumbled upon this years ago during one of my periodic trawls through the pages of an old Rothmans football yearbook.
With the centenary approaching, I decided a few months ago to try and find out more about it, with the aim of writing an article for The Blizzard, a new and unashamedly literary football quarterly based in Sunderland in north-east England.