Football’s Irish exodus: Examining the factors influencing Irish player migration to English professional leagues 1

Abstract

The intention of this paper is to examine the range of interdependent processes that influence the decisions of Irish footballers to migrate from teams based in the League of Ireland to English Premier League and Football League clubs. Using data derived from a series of qualitative interviews conducted with a group of Irish players that had relocated to English clubs at different points over a 20-year period, the analysis reveals that the players’ decisions to migrate are predicated upon the interdependency of a number of processes that push the migrants from Ireland and pull them to England. The paper shows how these processes are reflected in a series of migrations where the players are not simply passive social agents but, rather, dynamic interlocutors whose decisions must be framed within the local contexts between which their movements are situated.

Keywords

football Ireland migration motivations players

The history of Irish migration to England is a long one. Indeed, the growth of the Irish diaspora in England is the result of a sustained and continued pattern of migration that can be traced all the way back to the 17th century (Darby and Hassan, 2007). The migrations of professional footballers are a prominent and long-term feature of this overall migratory pattern (Featherstone, 2005). For example, Irish players were already crossing the Irish Sea to play for English league clubs as early as the 1890s (Scally, 1998), and only Scotland has provided more players to the English leagues since the end of the Second World War (McGovern, 2000). Whilst, in the modern era, English clubs recruit from a much broader range of places than they did in the past, the migrations of Irish footballers to the English Leagues remain a salient feature of the professional game’s global employment market (Poli et al., 2012).

Whilst the movement of Irish players to the English leagues has, for some time, been one of the more ubiquitous flows of talent observable in professional football, these particular migrations still remain a “curiously under-researched part of the Irish emigration phenomena” (McGovern, 2000: 401). For example, few studies have sought to debate what it is that actually motivates so many Irish footballers to leave Ireland and specifically select England as their preferred destination when seeking employment opportunities in the game. Bourke’s (2003) study examining the movements of elite Irish youth players to English academies does begin to attend to some of the issues bound up in questions of motive. However, beyond this work, scant attention has been paid to the interdependent series of processes that contour the movements observable via this particular talent pipeline.

These processes are bound up in the decisions that individual migrants make as they negotiate their way through this particular migratory field. They are also reflective, however, of the structural constraints in which any decision to migrate is framed. To examine the interplay that exists between these two processes, this paper analyses those factors that influenced a group of senior Irish professional footballers to relocate from clubs based in the League of Ireland to English Premier League and Football League clubs. The intention is to show how these particular movements are shaped not only by the personal choices of the migrants, but also by the local contexts that exist at the point of departure and arrival. To achieve this end, qualitative data was gathered from a group of Irish players who had relocated to English Premier League or Football League clubs at different points over a 20-year period.

To make sense of the complexities of migrant motivation when considering the movements of this particular group of players, the first part of the paper reviews research that has sought to make sense of the factors that influence professional footballers to migrate from one country to another. This part of the paper shows how the motivation to migrate extends beyond the simple personal choices of the players themselves. The second part of the paper then provides context with respect to the development of professional football in Ireland and England. The intention here is to highlight the very different structural conditions that exist in the donor and host localities; conditions that are fundamental in influencing the decisions that the migrants ultimately make in terms of their relocation. In part three the paper’s methodology is outlined, before in parts four and five, the data are presented and discussed accordingly.

The motivation to migrate

The increase in the number of players that now migrate from one country to another to ply their athletic labour is one of the most ubiquitous features of the contemporary globalisation of professional football (Elliott, 2012). Many, if not all, of the world’s elite professional football leagues now host players and other associated workers from a varied cross-section of places. The intensification in migratory movements is reflective of a series of interdependent processes. At a general level, these include the ability to traverse the globe more quickly and to communicate more easily. In football more specifically, the rapid commercialisation of the professional game and the 1995 Bosman case have contributed to the shifting dynamics of football’s increasingly global employment market.

The changing economic structure of the professional game has resulted in a significant growth in revenues, media rights sales, player valuations and salary costs (see, for example, the annually produced Deloitte Review of Football Finance and Football Money League). The rise in salary costs has been particularly significant, with some of the more established European leagues witnessing huge salary growth in the last two decades. Some scholars have argued that it is the increase in the salaries available to players in a number of leagues that has driven the dynamics of migration in the contemporary game (Andreff, 2009). Outside of professional sport, such a contention would seem reasonable, as migrants often relocate to take advantage of the positive wage disparities that exist between employment markets (Fischer et al., 1997).

Whilst the motivation to seek out the best salary may influence a player’s decision to migrate, it is rarely the only antecedent to a player’s decision to leave one club for another, however. For example, Maguire and Pearton (2000) have identified that the practice of “following the money” (761) is interconnected with a broader series of processes that reflect political, historical, cultural and geographical patterns. In this respect, research that has examined the motives behind the movements of professional footballers has identified that a range of processes contour the decision to migrate.

For example, research has shown that among these processes the need to seek out a “professional sporting experience” is of great importance for some migrant groups, particularly those where obtaining employment in one of Europe’s established elite leagues is a required perquisite to be considered a “professional” footballer (Maguire and Stead, 1998; Stead and Maguire, 2000). In addition, some players are motivated by the search for an intensity of commitment or by the desire to test their abilities at a higher level (Molnar and Maguire, 2008). These examples show that the significance of personal ambition should never be underestimated when considering what it is that motivates professional footballers to leave one country for another (Elliott, 2012).

Indeed, ambition, it would seem, often permeates the decisions that players make when deciding whether or not to move to a particular club or league. For some players this ambition is marked by their desire to secure employment at a club where they feel they may be granted increased exposure, perhaps by playing in one of Europe’s prestigious competitions such as the UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League (Elliott, 2012, 2013; Magee and Sugden, 2002). On other occasions players may move to a club that they perceive to be commensurate with their abilities but situated in a league that they think may act as a “springboard” or “stepping-stone” to somewhere else – somewhere better (Elliott, 2012). For other migrants it may simply be about being given the opportunity to play the game. As Roderick (2013) asserts in his study of the intranational movements of professional footballers, some players “recognise that job relocation is the only means by which their professional status can be extended” (392). In this respect, it should be borne in mind that the structural conditions that exist at the point of departure leave some players with little or no choice but to relocate if they wish to pursue their career as a professional footballer (Elliott, 2013).

The development of professional football’s contemporary global figuration and the uneven distributions of power within it, mean that some players may not always be able to stay in a particular place to develop a career as a professional footballer. The poor infrastructural conditions that often exist in some peripheral leagues can mean that players are pushed from certain locations. For example, the structural frailties of football (soccer) in the United States that existed for many years have been identified as pushing some North American players out of the American sporting space (Elliott and Harris, 2011). After the collapse of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1984 there was no professional league at all in the USA until Major League Soccer’s (MLS’s) formation in 1996. During this period, the United States’ best players had no choice but to look abroad for professional playing opportunities. Since 1996 MLS has grown. However, the structural, economic and competitive conditions that exist in the USA still fail to meet the ambitions of America’s most talented soccer players. To demonstrate this, consider that the USA squad that competed in the World Cup Finals in Germany in 2006 included players employed by clubs in England, Germany, Holland and Belgium, whilst the 2010 World Cup squad included a number of players registered with English Premier League clubs, including all three of the goalkeepers (Elliott and Harris, 2011).

A similar pattern has emerged in Africa in recent years where the increasingly commonplace migrations of African players to leagues in Europe and other parts of the world can be identified as the result of a lack of opportunities in the various leagues located on the continent (Darby, 2007; Darby et al., 2007; Lanfranchi and Taylor, 2001). Whilst some clubs (predominantly those located in North Africa) have professionalised to a point where they are able to retain some of their local players for longer (Darby, 2011), the majority of African clubs lack the financial, football or infrastructural conditions to match the level of ability of an increasing number of highly talented African players. The result is that with increasing regularity African players are seeking or being sought by teams in Europe’s more established leagues and in a range of other places.

These examples capture some sense of the complexity of migrant motivation. What they show is that the motivations of professional football’s increasingly cosmopolitan workforce cannot be reduced to any single causal factor – and certainly not financial gain alone. A player’s decision to migrate should not simply be reduced to a series of intrinsic and largely personal influences. To be truly meaningful, the structural conditions that exist at the player’s points of departure and arrival should also be taken into consideration. Only when the structural factors are considered alongside the mix of more personal determinants of the motivation to migrate, can any realistic observations be made with respect to what it is that really motivates some professional footballers to move from one place to another to ply their trade. To begin to understand how this complex mix of processes affects migration from Ireland to England, the next part of the paper discusses the structural characteristics of the game in both nations.

Football in Ireland

Whilst football is, and has been, part of the very fabric of English culture for some time (Russell, 1997), in Ireland the game was, for many years, considered to be “anti-Irish” (Bourke, 2003). Commonly referred to as “the garrison game” (Bourke, 2011; Hannigan, 1998), the historical resistance that existed to “soccer” in Ireland hindered the development of the sport for much of its early existence. The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) formed its first league in 1921, comprised of teams from the Dublin area (Athlone became the first provincial club to join the league in 1922) (Bourke, 2011). The irony, however, was that for the first 50 years of its existence, the “foreign” status attributed to soccer in Ireland meant that the game was outlawed by the largest sports organisation in the country – the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), who would discipline any of their members found playing or spectating at soccer matches. This was the case until the GAA changed their rules in 1971 (George, 2013).

Originally established as just one division, it was not until 1985 that a second tier was added to Ireland’s domestic football league competition: the League of Ireland. Whilst the introduction of this new division marked a period of increasing popularity for domestic soccer in the country, the game still struggled to compete against the historically and culturally embedded sports of rugby union and the GAA, both equally if not more popular in many counties of Ireland. As a result, League of Ireland clubs have always struggled to attract significant numbers of fans to matches. For example, during the 2012 season the lowest average attendance was recorded at University College Dublin, where 768 fans regularly watched matches. The highest average attendance was recorded at Shamrock Rovers, where the number was 3938. Given the relatively modest levels of attendance at matches, sponsorship and advertising revenues and media rights sales for the league operate at a fraction of the values that the more established European leagues are able to attract (Deloitte, 2012). This means that the majority of club personnel, including players, managers, coaches and administrators, are often employed on a part-time or voluntary basis (Bourke, 2003, 2011).

Whilst the number of fans regularly attending League of Ireland matches is relatively low when compared to other leagues in Europe, these numbers would appear to stand in direct contradiction to the popularity of soccer in Ireland, however. Consider, for example, that 51,000 tickets for Liverpool FC’s match versus Celtic at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium in August 2013 sold out within an hour of going on sale (McGreevy, 2013). Consider also that some 164,000 Irish fans travelled to watch matches in the English and Scottish Premier Leagues during the 2011/2012 season (McGreevy, 2013). Couple these figures with the €382million revenue that Sky, a “foreign” broadcaster, generates in Ireland each year and it becomes clear that the Irish thirst for soccer exists not in its own domestic competition, but in those leagues located across the Irish sea – particularly the English Premier League.

Football in England

Unlike Ireland, where the popularity of domestic soccer has fluctuated and the development of more professionalised teams and leagues has been problematic, in England, professional football has been an established part of the sporting and cultural landscape for more than a century (Russell, 1997). The league structure in England is one of the most comprehensive in the world, including four fully professional leagues comprised of 92 clubs and a further system of national and regional semi-professional leagues that comprise the overall football “pyramid”. At the very top of this system is England’s Premier League, comprised of 20 clubs and including some of the richest and most high-profile sports businesses in the world.

The Premier League was formed in 1992 after a period in which English football found itself in a general malaise. A number of high-profile disasters and the spectre of football hooliganism had blighted the game in England during the 1980s. In addition during this period, England’s top clubs had become increasingly discontent with what they saw as an unfair distribution of television money. Wanting to retain a greater proportion of this money for themselves, those responsible for some of the biggest English league clubs broke away from the Football League and formed the Premier League, negotiating their own television rights with new commercial satellite broadcaster BSkyB and the BBC (Conn, 1997). The new TV deal was worth £214 million over 5 years, increasing to £670 million in 1997, £1.024 billion in 2001, £1.7 billion in 2006 and £3.018 billion in 2012. When coupled with overseas rights that, in the last sale, generated £1.4 billion, the Premier League quickly became one of the richest sports competitions in the world: a global spectacle of accumulation.

The new wealth that entered English football in the 1990s and early 2000s was spent on almost entirely rebranding the game in England. Indeed, Sky’s positioning for the first season of the new Premier League was: “It’s a whole new ball game”. As a result of the money that flooded into the game and in response to the recommendations set out in the 1990 Taylor Report, clubs spent millions on new stadium development, some clubs choosing to reinvigorate their existing facilities, while others built from scratch. Even more was spent on salaries to entice the world’s best players to the league – the result was a considerable increase in the numbers of foreign (non-British or Irish) players recruited. Whereas only 11 foreign players had started games at the beginning of the Premier League’s inaugural season (Elliott and Weedon, 2010), the number of appearances by foreign players outnumbered those of their indigenous counterparts by 2001 (Elliott, 2009).

By the conclusion of its 20th season, the Premier League was broadcast in 212 territories where 650 million homes received match coverage. Some 36 million fans attended matches and professional football clubs contributed more than £1 billion to the British government in tax. Since the league’s first season, more than £3 billion had been spent on stadium development with 25 stadia in England and Wales having a capacity greater than 30,000. The combined revenues of the 20 Premier League clubs equated to £2.3 billion, the clubs posted a combined wage bill of almost £1.6 billion, and spent a total of £364 million on foreign players (Deloitte, 2012).

Although the Premier League has clearly benefitted to the greatest extent in English club football’s renaissance period, arguably, the last 20 years have seen at least some improvement across all divisions. Some 46 clubs have at one time or another occupied a place in the Premier League. However, the system of relegation and promotion that operates in English league football means that clubs regularly move between the divisions. Clubs can generate significant wealth whilst occupying higher league positions, wealth that can be used to improve playing and training facilities. Whilst only 20 clubs can play in the Premier League at any one time, the benefits of having spent time in the league can be felt in the Football League Championship (England’s second tier division) and to a certain degree in Football League One and Two (the third and fourth tiers). Whilst professional football clubs in England have not been immune to financial hardships and some significant disparities have emerged between the economic power of the Premier League and Football League clubs, the point here is that League of Ireland clubs are still economically and culturally less powerful than English Football League clubs – even those in the lower reaches of the league. It is important to bear this in mind when considering the balance of power that exists between the Irish and English Leagues.

Method

The aim of this project was to analyse the motives behind the migrations of a small sample of Irish footballers that had relocated from Ireland to English Premier League and Football League clubs. To meet this aim, 10 Irish players, all of whom had relocated from Ireland to England for football reasons, were interviewed using a semi-structured method. The players were asked a range of questions relating to their decisions to leave Ireland for England. Their responses were analysed using a thematic analysis.

The players that formed the sample group for the study were initially recruited via a gatekeeper that had relocated from Ireland to England to play in the Football League and who had a connection to the author. The gatekeeper was able to identify and communicate with a number of other players who eventually became part of the sample group. Identifying and gaining access to additional respondents beyond those included in this study was difficult, however. This is to be expected though, as the impregnable world of professional football (Magee and Sugden, 2002) is one in which “players rarely grant interviews in which they respond to questions about their playing careers so candidly” (Roderick, 2013: 391). Therefore, whilst the size of the sample can be seen as a limitation of this study, its basis in qualitative data collected from the players themselves should be seen as strengthening the analysis.

Whilst all of the interviews for this study were conducted during 2012 and 2013, the players’ careers spanned more than 20 years and reflected a mix of experiences. For example, a number of the players had represented the Republic of Ireland at full or youth international level. Some had played for Premier League clubs, whilst others had careers that had been exclusively limited to the lower reaches of the English Football Leagues. However, all of the players had experienced careers in professional football that were reflective of multiple relocations and all had actively sought employment in the English leagues over trying to develop their careers in Ireland. Their responses when interviewed highlighted a range of issues. The next part of the paper explores these responses.

The motivations of Irish players migrating to England

The sections that follow draw on the data obtained from the interviews conducted with the players. The data presented provide examples of the subjective interpretations of the players when questioned in respect of their motivations to relocate to England. Points of divergence were observed in the data; however, a number of convergent themes were also clearly identifiable. These themes related to the perceived inadequacies of the Irish football system, the ambition of the players to pursue and develop professional careers in the game, geographical proximity, migrant networks and cultural similarity.

No real incentive to stay

Football (soccer) in Ireland has had a difficult history. Outlawed for much of its early existence (George, 2013), the domestic game has struggled to gain any sort of real foothold when considered relatively to other sports in Ireland and other professional football leagues situated in Western Europe. The result is that League of Ireland clubs can usually only offer part-time contracts to players (and other coaching, administrative and support staff) (Bourke, 2003). For all of the players interviewed, the part-time nature of football in Ireland was a constituent component of a series of broader structural factors that they felt influenced their decisions to leave the country. A number of players talked about the “lack of full-time playing opportunities available [in Ireland]” as a significant antecedent to their moving. Players commented in regards to how they felt their migration was “inevitable” in the context of their overall career trajectory. For example, one remarked: “If you’re playing sports, or certainly soccer, with the way the league is in Ireland, I think the first thing you look to do is go away to England”. Another player provided a similar response: “I never intended on leaving, but I think it was always in the back of my mind that that’s where football would take me… I think the way the domestic league is in Ireland, you can only get so far”.

Whilst a number of the players interviewed simply inferred that the Irish league offered little to incentivise local players to remain in Ireland to pursue their athletic careers, others provided more detail in terms of what they perceived to be the inadequacies of the Irish game. For example, when discussing why he moved to England, a former Premier League and Republic of Ireland international commented:

The League of Ireland is part-time, the crowds are very small, there’s probably ten teams in the Premier Division, twelve teams in the First Division, the First Division is only semi-professional, the wages aren’t very good, the coaching’s of no comparison to England whatsoever. There’s no real incentive for players to stay.

Another player who had played for a number of English lower league clubs in a 13-year career made similar remarks. He argued:

With Irish football there are so many inadequacies from the top right down to the bottom, the structure leaves a lot to be desired. There’s no academy system, teams struggle financially, the FAI doesn’t really care about the domestic league, so what chance have you got if you’re an aspiring professional?… The only option is for you to move across to England where there is everything in place for you to succeed.

These comments bring to light a number of concerns that the players had in respect of the structural inadequacies of the domestic league in Ireland: concerns that were exacerbated when they juxtaposed their observations of the Irish league with the perceived superiority of the English league structure. All of the players talked about the League of Ireland in very negative terms, many arguing, like the players in Roderick’s (2013) study, that they had little or no choice but to relocate if they wished to extend their engagement with the sport at professional level. Whilst the players’ observations said something about the structural conditions that existed at the point of departure, they also reflected the players’ ambitions to develop their careers as professional footballers.

Following a dream: ambition and the pull to England

The perceived structural inadequacies of the Irish league system that were observed by the players clearly acted to push them from their domestic league competition. All of the players believed that their opportunities to develop their careers were significantly limited if they chose to remain in Ireland. Whilst the players’ initial responses provided motive to leave the country, further questioning presented greater detail in terms of their specific desires to select England as their preferred destination. For example, as one player put it:

Growing up, there was no domestic league Match of the Day or anything like that. It was all Premier League based… cross-channel football was all over your TV, so you grew up supporting the British clubs, and so your dream was obviously to play for the club of your choice and whoever you supported.

Further echoing the influence of media coverage in fuelling the ambitions of Irish players to relocate to England, another player offered a similar response: “Watching telly growing up and you’re looking at all of the big Premier League games; facilities, fans, TV coverage – all that is so much more advanced over here [in England] than it is in Ireland”. For all of the players in the sample, being exposed to English football growing up clearly had an influence on their decisions to select English league clubs as their eventual destinations. The broadcasting of English league matches (and particularly Premier League matches) exposed these players to the superiority of the English league system and the rewards available for those players who possessed the talent and ambition to secure employment within it.

Indeed, the players’ desire to secure a professional sporting experience (Maguire and Stead, 1998; Stead and Maguire, 2000), something that was not available in Ireland, was a central theme that emerged throughout the data. As one player put it: “I just wanted to pursue a professional career and that’s what it was all about – being a professional footballer”. Another player provided a similar response, when asked why he selected England over other leagues: “My key motivations were to pursue a full-time professional career, establish myself as a first team player, and improve and progress by playing against better players”.

The desire to test abilities at a higher level and against better players was another recurring theme that emerged from the data. For example, when asked what had motivated him to select an English lower league club, one player responded: “My main motivation was to go over and basically mix-it with the best that England had to offer, and to see how far I could progress up the ladder”. Another player responded similarly, arguing that his relocation to an English Premier League club was motivated by a desire to “have a better career and play at a better standard”; he believed that this could be achieved by “playing against better players”. One player focussed less on the standard of competition and more on the structural superiority of the English game. When asked what had motivated him to select England as his migration destination, he argued: “The chances of developing are a lot higher in England than in Ireland because of the standard of coaching and the money they have to push players on”.

It became clear that the players’ ambitions to improve and test themselves at the highest levels clearly influenced their decisions to select England as their preferred migration destination. Like fans in peripheral football economies that are lured away from their own domestic football competitions by broadcasts of the “superior” established Western European leagues (McGovern, 2000), the benefits of securing employment with an English league club, and the relative superiority of the English game, were on full display every time a Premier League match was broadcast in Ireland. For the players interviewed, the goal of achieving full-time employment with a professional football club in England represented the culmination of a dream (Bourke, 2003) and life-long ambition. The relocations also represented moves that were worlds apart in football terms, but little distance at all geographically.

Similar cultures, different [football] worlds

Analysis of the data showed that the structural inadequacies of the Irish football system when considered in conjunction with the superiority of the English game serve to create a range of potential push and pull factors that, when combined with the ambitions of the players, can be seen to influence their decisions to migrate from Ireland to England. In addition, and beyond these factors, the analysis of further data pointed to the significance of geographical proximity, cultural similarity and pre-existing migration ties as also influencing the overall decisions of the migrants. For example, when considering the proximity of Ireland to England, one player commented: “England was my preferred destination, especially with it being so close to Ireland”. Another Football League Championship player also suggested that the ease with which he could travel between England and Ireland was influential in his decision: “It was an hour’s flight from Birmingham to Cork, so within a couple of hours I was back home”. The proximity of the donor and host nations has been identified as being important in influencing migration decisions in the past (Elliott, 2013).

Important also is cultural similarity (Molnar and Maguire, 2008). For example, an absolute priority for successful adjustment in a new environment is the migrant’s ability to speak the host language (Weedon, 2011). Whilst migration to a foreign place will always present a range of challenges for migrants, if the migrant is able to speak the host language, particularly understanding specific aspects of the football vernacular, and to comprehend aspects of local culture more broadly, the ability to traverse through the day’s routine tasks, both at work and away from it, can be eased significantly. A number of comments from the players reinforced this idea. For example, one player described how England was: “so similar [to Ireland] in terms of things like language, food and the lifestyle in general”. Another player responded: “It was more or less like being in Ireland. It just seemed a bit bigger and busier”.

Whilst some players commented specifically on the similarities that were observable between the two countries, others focused on the pre-existing migration routes that existed and through which they had seen their peers migrate. For example, one player commented:

It was one of them where you grow up and you see your mates going on trials and you see your mates signing for teams in England… you always think to yourself, I want to be part of that and want to experience it.

Another player made a similar observation. However, rather than just observing other Irish players moving to English clubs, he discussed how he gained confidence from having been supported by a family member who had successfully relocated to an English Premier League club. He said: “My eldest brother moved over when he was 14 and that was probably another main influence. He was at Southampton at the time, so it made it a lot easier to make the move”.

Other players also talked about the support that they had received from other migrants who had already relocated to English clubs. One of the players who had played in the English lower divisions commented:

I was lucky enough to stay with one of the Irish players at Stockport while I was on trial, and he was from near where I was, so he filled me in on how everything works, and that made it a lot easier for me.

Beyond the football context, a number of players were able to take advantage of additional ties that supported them in their migration to England. Three of the players interviewed already had family living in the country and all commented on how having this additional support made relocating much easier.

The ability of the migrants to take advantage of a pre-existing migration pathway was clearly influential in their decisions to relocate from Ireland to England. The capacity to draw on the experiences of those players that had previously migrated appeared to be particularly significant. The movements of the players were, on many occasions, enabled via a range of social ties and contact networks (Roderick, 2006). Specific individuals and groups acted as “bridgeheads” (Meyer, 2001) that were able to circulate knowledge with respect to employment in the destination environment and provide support that contributed to the players’ decisions to leave Ireland for England.

Football’s Irish exodus: issues and observations

Irish footballers have moved to English league clubs for over a century (Scally, 1998). These movements form part of a larger and more complex series of migratory patterns that have developed between Ireland and England for more than 400 years (Darby and Hassan, 2007; Featherstone, 2005). Whilst the English leagues now cast their nets much wider in search of the best available football talent, it is still the case that Ireland has come second only to Scotland in the supply of footballers to the English professional leagues since the Second World War (McGovern, 2000). This trend undoubtedly says something about the history and connectedness of the two nations in migratory terms. It also reflects the uneven development of the game in Ireland and England.

Whilst football is the most highly globalised of all sports, like many facets of life in a globalised world, the globalisation of the game has not been even over time. Political, economic and cultural factors have influenced the permeation of the global sport par excellence (Elliott and Weedon, 2010) into different parts of Europe (and the world) at different times. In Ireland, the development of the game may have been hampered by the “foreign” status attributed to it (Bourke, 2003, 2011; George, 2013). The development of professional teams and leagues has been much slower in Ireland than in other parts of Europe. This means that the League of Ireland is significantly less powerful than those established leagues that have emerged in professional football’s contemporary global figuration. When juxtaposed with the English leagues, some of which are amongst the most powerful, and all of which are economically superior to the League of Ireland, a range of push and pull factors emerge that influence the career decisions of Irish players.

All of the players interviewed expressed their ambition to pursue a career as a professional footballer and all understood that in order for this to happen they would have to leave Ireland to do so. Therefore, whilst some professional footballers might choose to migrate because, for example, they are not receiving the desired match playing time (Elliott, 2013), or because they want to play in one of Europe’s prestigious cup competitions (Elliott, 2012; Magee and Sugden, 2002), the players observed in this study were effectively denied opportunities to play professionally in their homeland and forced to migrate because the structural conditions in the Irish league meant that opportunities for full-time professional careers did not exist (Bourke, 2003). In this respect, it is much easier for English club sides to lure Irish players with the promise of full-time professional careers, higher salaries, an established infrastructure, high-quality coaching, bigger match attendances and media exposure. For Irish players, even the lower reaches of the English professional system represent a significant improvement on the opportunities on offer in the League of Ireland and significant advancement in their careers.

The proximity of England to Ireland and the similar cultures that the two countries share are also contributory factors in the migration decisions of the players. The ability to travel “home” to Ireland with relative ease, to speak the language and to broadly understand aspects of the culture in England were all cited as reasons for seeking employment in the English leagues. Similar observations have been made in other research that has traced the migrations of professional footballers in other places (see, for example, Elliott, 2012, and Molnar and Maguire, 2008).

In addition, the power of the “Irish connection” (McGovern, 2000) should also be taken into account and seen as influential in the overall interdependent series of processes that results in the migrations of Irish players to English league clubs. The consistent movements that have occurred between Ireland and England for more than a century provide what might be described as a “demonstration effect” (McGovern, 2000) for potential Irish migrants. Meyer (2001), for example, has shown how friends, relatives and work colleagues, acting as “bridgeheads” in the recruitment process, can influence the migration decisions of potential migrants. Often operating as part of “friends-of-friends” networks (Bale, 1991), bridgeheads can help to convince potential migrants that they are suitable for the job by demonstrating their own success as a migrant in a particular social and cultural environment, by helping new migrants from similar backgrounds to settle in the host country and by convincing employers that migrants recruited from a particular location can be assimilated effectively.

Conclusion

Surprisingly little is known about the motivations of those Irish footballers that seek employment in the English leagues. By drawing on qualitative data gathered from the migrants themselves, this study shows how a complex range of interdependent processes influence and facilitate the movements of this particular group of sports labour migrants. The paper shows how these processes are reflected in a series of migrations where the players are not simply passive social agents but, rather, dynamic interlocutors (Carter, 2013) whose decisions must be framed within the local contexts between which their movements are situated.

It would seem that whilst English league clubs have become more cosmopolitan in their recruiting strategies in recent years, the employment of Irish players remains a ubiquitous feature of the professional game’s employment market. The lack of professional playing opportunities in Ireland, the superior status of the English leagues, the ambition of Irish players to develop professional careers in the game, geographical proximity, cultural similarity and the ability to take advantage of a range of pre-existing migration networks means that the “talent pipeline” through which so many Irish players travel to England is a well developed and potentially self-sustaining one.

Arguably, the talent pipeline that has developed between the League of Ireland and English professional clubs is perpetuated by the imbalance of power that exists between the two countries in professional football’s contemporary global figuration. As a result of the imbalance that exists, Irish players find themselves constrained by their own domestic employment market, yet situated geographically next to another where employment can represent significant advancement in their careers with minimum social and cultural disruption to life’s flow. Given the relatively short-term nature of playing careers in professional football (Roderick, 2006), and the structural contexts in which these particular employments are framed, Irish players have little choice but to migrate if they wish to build a career, at professional level, in the game.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the support received from Declan Edwards in the production of this paper.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

1.

The island of Ireland is divided into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, a constituent country of the United Kingdom. This paper focuses exclusively on players born in, and migrating out of, the Republic of Ireland.

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