St Patrick's Athletic F.C.

Origins of the club

Football in Inchicore dates back to at least 1898. There had been several previous local clubs called St Patrick's and St Patrick's Athletic, as well as clubs associated with the Inchicore railway works, the Great Southern Railways (also known as the GSR). The more recent of these, GSR FC, started around 1927. They played in the Athletic Union League at first, with their home ground at Bluebell, although most of their games from then on were played in the Inchicore Works or "Pond Field" with others at Richmond Park and Chapelizod. GSR fielded two teams in 1929–30; an "A" team in the Leinster League Division Two, and a "B" team in the AUL Division One. GSR's B team seems to have been dropped for the following season, 1930–31. It is possible that the demands of senior football were such that they did not want to take on a second team, or perhaps belt-tightening at the recently consolidated company was taking hold. Around this time, GSR were approached by a group of young footballers asking them to take on a second team. These included Pat Dunphy, who gave a first-hand account of the formation of the club in an interview in 1989. Along with six of his fellow teenage friends who worked at the GSR, Pat states that they asked the company to take on a second team of younger players. "We were looking for them to take us over and they refused us on a couple of occasions. They (GSR) wouldn't have anything to do with it. They were a big team, we wanted to go…

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