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The Irish Times (subscription):
In addition to having played in Jones’s Road before the advent of Croke Park, Bohemians had a part in organizing a unique football match between the sexes at the City and Suburban Grounds.
Kevin Mallon writes that international soccer was first played at Jones’s Road in May 1896 when two women’s teams, one representing Ireland and Scotland combined and the other representing England, lined out. Ireland and Scotland won 3-2, before an “enormous ” capacity crowd, of “mostly men.”
So successful was the venture that a farewell game was fixed for the following Saturday, May 23, with 11 of the British Ladies Football Club up against a team of Dublin Gentlemen’s XI selected by Irish International ED Morrogh of Bohemians.
The BLFC had already beaten a men’s team in Cardiff in 1895, so a keen contest was expected. The Freeman’s Journal, however, expressed doubts about the event, believing that “the gallantry of the gentlemen would not permit them to defeat their opponents”. Reports of the result vary between a 2-2 draw or a 5-2 win for the women.
Filed under: History
