Funny old games: a social history

Sport in Ireland 1600-1840

**By** James Kelly

**Four Courts Press,** €39.95

**Reviewed by** Dermot Bolger

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It is interesting that while horse racing - that noble pastime of the rich - continued during the First World War, professional football - the frowned-upon sport of factory workers - was quickly knocked on the head. Even before WWI began, one Bournemouth Congregationalist minister had already branded football as a ''perversion of God's meaning of life.