FAI Cup Format - Historic to Present

**EalingGreen** · 21/07/2023, 11:49 AM

Don't want to clog up the 2023 FAI Cup thread in the Main Section, but it only occurred to me recently that the FAI Cup has a rather limited pool of participants these days. That is, 20 LOI teams and 20 others, playing out the competition over 6 rounds, with the LOI teams entering at the Second Round.

Has this always been the case? Or is it a consequence of the switch to a Summer season in 2003, meaning that before then, many more Intermediate, even Junior, sides would enter in Preliminary Rounds, where they were progressively whittled down until the Senior teams entered at a later stage?

Having googled a bit, I see that eg the Welsh Cup has 253(!) entrants, the Irish Cup 130-odd and the Scottish Cup 126, all played over 9 Rounds. With more entrants, winning teams have to negotiate an extra Round or two (at least) over their FAI counterparts, with the tournament running over 9 months from opening round to Final (FAI Cup 7 months).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%9323_Welsh_Cup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%9323_Irish_Cup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E...3_Scottish_Cup

**culloty82** · 25/07/2023, 12:29 PM

Not sure if other countries have the equivalents of the Junior and Intermediate Cups (bar England and Scotland, of course), however - a club in Kerry for instance, will participate in the KDL Cup, the Munster Junior Cup, and the FAI Junior Cup over the course of their season, with the last competition featuring roughly 700 sides, initially organised on a regional basis. Would personally argue that a minimum of eight junior teams, rather than merely the semi-finalists, should be included in the Senior Cup format, but that's just my own opinion.

**culloty82** · 25/07/2023, 12:36 PM

Looking at historical seasons, if anything the format was even more restrictive, involving only 16 teams:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961%E2%80%9362_FAI_Cup

**EalingGreen** · 01/08/2023, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by culloty82

Not sure if other countries have the equivalents of the Junior and Intermediate Cups (bar England and Scotland, of course), however

NI has both.
The Junior Cup dates from 1888 and last season the 1st Round had 113 ties/226 teams, with another 15 teams given a bye to the 2nd Round (= 64 ties/128 teams):
https://www.irishfa.com/ifa-domestic...eld-junior-cup
While the 1st Round in last season's Intermediate Cup (1892) had 48 ties/96 sides, plus another 16 teams getting a bye to the 2nd Round (= 32 ties/64 teams):
https://www.irishfa.com/ifa-domestic...termediate-cup

Originally Posted by culloty82

... a club in Kerry for instance, will participate in the KDL Cup, the Munster Junior Cup, and the FAI Junior Cup over the course of their season

Each of the four regional Associations - Fermanagh & Western FA, North West FA, Mid-Ulster FA and Co.Antrim FA - have their own equivalent cups, covering various levels from Junior, through Intermediate, to Senior.

Originally Posted by culloty82

... with the last competition featuring roughly 700 sides, initially organised on a regional basis

Highly impressive.

**EalingGreen** · 01/08/2023, 5:54 PM

Originally Posted by culloty82

Looking at historical seasons, if anything the format was even more restrictive, involving only 16 teams:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961%E2%80%9362_FAI_Cup

I hadn't realised, but when I googled the Irish Cup for 1961/62 for comparative purposes, I see that it too only had 16 teams participating:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961%E2%80%9362_Irish_Cup

"Every day's a school day!"

(Will maybe do some more googling to see when/how the competition expanded)

EDIT: From season 1982/83 on, the Irish Cup was expanded from 16 teams to 32. As it happens, season 1986/87 had to revert to 16 teams, since the whole league system was being restructured. Then season 1987/88 had 23 teams (eh?), before the big expansion in 1988/89 to 76 teams, allowing for five rounds before Quarters, Semi's and Final. This has been expanded in subsequent years to around 128 entrants currently.

Curiously enough, 1988/89 incorporated a number of factory/company/works teams, incl. Civil Service, Harland & Wolff Sports (not Welders), GEC, Standard Telephones, Post Office Social Cliub, Shorts, Sirocco Works, Blue Circle and RUC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9389_Irish_Cup

Of course most of those have since disappeared with the decline of traditional industrries in NI, but did ROI have a similar tradition of works teams back then too?

**culloty82** · 03/08/2023, 6:58 PM

Indeed we did, the Wiki article on Transport F.C. gives an excellent summary on the importance of works teams in the early LoI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_F.C.

**pineapple stu** · 03/08/2023, 7:06 PM

UCD would have played a huge number of works teams in the LSL from 1922 to 1970. (You could almost count UCD as a works team of sorts). I'd say the teams were split roughly evenly between works teams, B teams, and "real" clubs as it were

So you had Bendigo, Vickers, B&I Steam Packet Company, 6th Brigade (in Collins Barracks), St Brendan's Hospital, CIÉ, the Gas Works, the Hospital Sweep, BS Union (never found out what BS stood for), Jacob's, and so on

St James' Gate would be the most famous of course; inaugural LoI winners