Greatest Short League in the World: A history of 18-game (and fewer) seasons in the League of Ireland

And so it has come to pass that the League of Ireland has its 100th champion with Shamrock Rovers securing an 18th league title.

It is by no means certain that the Hoops will complete the programme of 18 league games, but if that happens Stephen Bradley’s side will become the 17th team to claim the title of League of Ireland champions after a season of this length.

The format of ten teams playing each other at home and away once each has been followed, yes you’ve guessed it, 16 times before. On six occasions it was eight teams, playing 14 games.

Unlike today, and the pre-Covid 21st century, when everything is focused on the league title and European qualification, LOI clubs in earlier decades were a lot more concerned with winning trophies.

The league championship itself was played over two rounds (home and away) between the league’s membership, with the rest of the season being filled up with competitions such as the Dublin City Cup and the League of Ireland Shield.

This last trophy was considered a much bigger deal than the League Cup, which eventually replaced it.

The Shield took up a substantial portion of the season, usually being staged as a full round of games with all teams playing each other once, although on a couple of occasions it was two rounds, the same as the league championship.

The name of the Dublin City Cup referred to the donors of the trophy, and the competition was entered by all league clubs.

 



 In the years it was staged, it often took a similar format to the shield, being played over one round.

Although on some occasions it was a straight knockout and on others it used a hybrid format involving a group stage.

These competitions were run in addition to that hardy perennial, the FAI Cup, aka ‘the blue riband of Irish football’, other cups run by the provincial associations, and intermittently staged cross-border competitions.

It was thus perfectly normal for league games to constitute less than half of a club’s fixture list.

So when were these shorter league championships and who won those titles?

The first League of Ireland season began as the representatives of the then Sinn Féin movement were conducting negotiations with David Lloyd George, the then British ‘Prime Minister’ (a title they insist on using for their Taoiseach to this day) and continued into 1922 as the British withdrew from the 26 counties.



This political partition of the country that occurred at this time hardened a footballing split that had been growing between north and south, or really the Unionist-leaning Belfast clubs and the Leinster Football Association.

This first season was contested by 8 clubs, all from Dublin, but the following year, this number moved up to twelve before being pared back to 10 the following season.

St James’ Gate won the first 14-game League of Ireland and Bohemians lifted the first 18-game league in 1923-24.

This format remained in place until the early 1930s, with the Gypsies going on to add another two titles, while Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne landed two each.

As the 1920s progressed, the league spread geographically, with Athlone Town, Fordsons (of Cork), and Dundalk Great Northern Railway all joining, before the further addition of Waterford in 1930 saw the league move to 12 teams.

This was followed by a return to ten in 1932-33, a season which saw Dundalk, who had dropped the railway reference, winning their first league title.

The following season saw Bohemians gathering yet another 18-game league, before the Dolphin club of Dublin’s south-west inner-city landed the title in 1934-35. That season saw Sligo join as Shelbourne dropped out.

The league then expanded back to 12 teams for the rest of the 1930s, with Shelbourne returning, initially as the tribute club ‘Reds United’, but contracted to 11 in 1940-41, and 10 again in 1941-42.

These issues were largely a result of shortages caused by the Emergency (or the Second World War as I believe its known in some foreign parts).

From 1940-41 to 1942-43, Irish football saw the reign of the great three-in-a-row Cork United side and.

Following Shelbourne’s win in 1943-44, the Leeside club added a further two titles in 1945 and 1946, although the league had further contracted to eight teams by this time.

It stayed that way for six years, with St James’ Gate, Drumcondra, and Shelbourne (twice) also landing 14-game league titles.

Although plucky little Sligo had to withdraw during the Emergency, and Waterford dropped out for a few seasons, at least three and sometimes four of the eight teams in the league were from outside Dublin in this period.

A list of League of Ireland seasons run with 18 or fewer games.

The 1948-49 season was momentous. It saw the return of Sligo Rovers, the addition of Transport FC, a CIE works teams playing out of the Carlisle Grounds, and the declaration of the Republic.

This change not only increased the league’s geographical spread and but also its appeal to trainspotters since the railway tracks in Sligo and Bray passed in view of both the Showgrounds and the Carlisle Grounds.

Most excitingly, for the purposes of this article, it also saw the league move to a ten-team/18-game format again for three seasons, with Drumcondra landing the 1948-49 title before Cork Athletic won two.

Cork Athletic had taken on the mantle of representing the Second City in the greatest league in the world, having taken Cork United’s place during the 48-49 season, in between the playing of the shield and the league championship.

At the end of 1951-52 the league moved to 12 teams again following the election of Leinster Senior League outfit St Patrick’s Athletic and another Cork team, Evergreen United of Turner’s Cross.

In true LOI style, these were the losing teams in the FAI Intermediate Cup Finals of the previous two seasons.

Evergreen later morphed into Cork Celtic, before going the way of Fordsons, Cork Athletic, Cork United, and a few others.

The league did return to the ten-team/18-game format again, for one season, in 1962. The two teams who had joined the league in 1948 both finished bottom at the end of the 1961-62 campaign and were not re-elected.

Once again Dundalk, who had landed their first league title when the league campaign had last been reduced to eighteen games, took advantage of the shortened season to grab the league title.

This also meant that Dundalk won the last league played before the admittance of Drogheda United who, along with returning Sligo, took part in the 1963-64 season.  Both have been stalwarts ever since, of course.  

We have had many seasons of ten-team leagues in both divisions during those 66 years.

Indeed, the First Division season was 18 games long for the first two times it was played, and a shield competition was used to fill up the calendar, with teams also joining the Premier Division sides in the League Cup.

However, since the changes introduced for the 1987-88 season, all ten-team divisions have been played across three or more rounds, at least until Covid-19.

The League of Ireland championship was played 66 times between the foundation of the league and the end of the 1986-87 season: on 43 occasions it was played over 22 games; on 23 other occasions it was fewer. The champions of those shorter seasons are listed below.

Ironically, given that the 18-game format has proved less than advantageous for the current Cork club, Cork United, whether on their own or counted with Cork Athletic, have been more successful under this format and similar ones than any other club.

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