Irish Football Association

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The Irish Football Association (IFA) is the organising body for the sport of football (soccer) in Northern Ireland. It should not be confused with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), which is the organising body in the Republic of Ireland.

The IFA was formed in 1880 by football clubs in the Belfast area as the organising body for the sport across all of Ireland. A meeting was called by Cliftonville FC of other football clubs who followed the rules set out by the Scottish Football Association (SFA) on November 18 of that year to form the IFA. It is the fourth oldest national football association in the world. The first decision they took was to form an annual challenge cup competition similar to the FA Cup and Scottish Cup competitions called the Irish Cup. Two years later the Irish national side played its first international against England, losing 13-0 (a record).

Upon the partition of Ireland in 1921 the FAI was set up to regulate the game in the Irish Free State (now the Republic). Those behind the FAI believed that soccer should be regulated by a federation based in Ireland's capital Dublin. The IFA's supporters argued that the federation should be based where the game was mainly played - Ulster and its principal city Belfast. Both federations claimed to represent the whole of the island and both competed as Ireland and both picked players from the two rival leagues - which also split at this time.

Interventions by FIFA effectively favoured the FAI by giving them de jure organising rights over the 26 counties of the Republic. From the 1950s onwards the IFA was no longer to claim it was the federation for the whole of Ireland.

The IFA regulated the game in the North, and all results obtained by the Irish national side and records in the Irish Football League and the cup competition stood as Northern Irish records. Therefore in essence the IFA as Northern Ireland's organising body is a direct continuation of the IFA as the organising body across all of Ireland.

Along with the other "home nations" associations (the FA, the SFA and the Football Association of Wales) the IFA sits on the International Football Association Board which is responsible for the laws of the game. The IFA continues to have responsibility for the running of the Northern Ireland national football team.

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