‘A wonderful Irish triumph’: The first victory by the Ireland men’s team over England 75 years later

The Republic of Ireland have only beaten England twice in the country’s history. While the 1988 victory over England in the European Championships has become a part of Irish cultural lore – think Christy Moore’s Joxer Goes to Stuttgart – September marks the 75th anniversary of a more forgotten landmark of Irish soccer – the 2-0 defeat of England at Goodison Park in 1949.
There was no underegging the significance of the game against England before it, with The Irish Times soccer correspondent Paddy McKenna calling it “the biggest match in the history of the association”.
In the build-up to the game many believed Ireland had little to no chance of beating a powerful English side, but confidently predicted that star player Johnny Carey would deal with Tom Finney. McKenna said England’s defence was “exceptionally strong” and the Irish team had a big task on their hands, despite the absence of Stanley Matthews.
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Frank Johnstone, a 20-year-old sports reporter, travelled over to the game on the bus and then the boat to Liverpool. Sitting beside him would be Shamrock Rovers and Ireland goalkeeper Tommy Godwin, who ended up the hero of the day.
“There was none of the present-day razzmatazz surrounding the Ireland soccer team and there would have been fewer than 200 travelling supporters,” Johnstone wrote in an Irishman’s Diary in The Irish Times in 2006.
There were 51,847 at the game, paying the £1 ticket to see “one of the most thrilling internationals ever witnessed”, said McKenna, perhaps understandably writing with green-tinted glasses. Why not too? The win saw Ireland became the first non-British team to beat the inventors of the organised game.
Con Martin scored a penalty after Peter Desmond was taken down in the box in the first half.
Then Godwin came into his own with save after save from the English onslaught from Finney, Billy Wright et al. Godwin’s performance was so impressive, by Monday he had signed for Leicester City. No messing about with transfers in those days.
“How could we lose with lord on our side?” wrote Johnstone about Carey, the Manchester United right-back who was that year’s football writers’ footballer of the year in England – along with Roy Keane he is the only ever Irish recipient of the award.
As predicted, Carey dealt with Finney, who stood off him and he could not create anything. The Daily Herald called Carey a “matchless defender”.
Five minutes from the end, Peter Farrell put the cherry on top and it was game over.
McKenna wrote that the Goodison Park crowd had been left dumbfounded by the result. Unsurprisingly, the English press came baying for blood.
Jack Milligan of the Daily Graphic wrote: “There will a ‘sack the lot’ campaign after this display of feckless forward play.” John Thompson of the Daily Mirror wrote that “England were pathetic. It was a wonderful Irish triumph and a sad day for England.” The British Pathé reel said of the game “A golden-lined England team, brilliant players that we know them to be, shed their skill and turned a vital international into a kick-and-rush hurley burley.”
Manager Walter Winterbottom survived another 13 years in the job though, including a humiliating loss to amateurs USA in the 1950 World Cup and a 6-3 loss to Hungary’s “Magical Magyars” in 1953, a game often wrongly attributed as England’s first defeat to a non-British side.
Johnstone said the English FA’s website even made such a mistake. “Maybe it’s simply less painful to think that the first home defeat of the then ‘best team in the world’ was engineered by the magnificent Ferenc Puskas rather than by Con Martin, Peter Farrell, Jackie Carey and Shamrock Rovers’ Tommy Godwin.”
In more English hubris, Henry Rose of the Daily Express had written before the match: “Anybody who thinks the Irish have any chance should make an appointment with a Harley Street psychiatrist.”
But Ireland had achieved the impossible, and just five months after the country had been declared a republic, it had a soccer scalp the likes of which have rarely been seen since.