Editing Gaelic football (section)

===First appearance of modern football===
During the 1860s and 1870s, [[rugby football]] started to become popular in Ireland. [[Trinity College Dublin]] was an early stronghold of rugby, and the rules of the [[(English) Football Association]] were codified in 1863 and distributed widely. By this time, according to Gaelic football historian Jack Mahon, even in the Irish countryside, ''caid'' had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game", which even allowed tripping.

The first account of what the founders of modern Gaelic football referred to as Irish football dates to 1873. Paddy Begley notes that in County Kerry in 1870 only soccer and rugby were played, although historian Paddy Foley notes that by 1874 a third, very different form of football began to emerge and spread across [[South-West Region, Ireland|South-West Ireland]]. At [[Killarney]], these highly popular matches were virtually indistinguishable from [[Australian Rules Football]] (first codified in 1859 and the oldest extant football code globally). This kicking variety of football was even played with an oval ball which became customary in Australia in the 1870s and that scoring was achieved only by kicking goals.<ref name="Corrigan 2009 p. ">{{Cite book |last=Corrigan |first=Eoghan |title=The History of Gaelic Football: the Definitive History of Gaelic Football from 1873 |publisher=Gill Books |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-7171-6369-4 |publication-place=Dublin |oclc=1013828570}}</ref> A major difference between the two styles is that the Irish variety featured high kicking "[[Bomb (kick)|up and under]]" whereas in colonial Victoria, the little marks or foot passes were much more common.<ref>{{Cite news |date=6 April 1935 |title=FOOTBALL BORN IN GOLD RUSH ERA |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article46687603 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240730161256/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/46687603 |archive-date=30 July 2024 |access-date=8 December 2021 |work=[[Barrier Miner]] |location=New South Wales, Australia |page=8 (SPORTS EDITION) |via=National Library of Australia |volume=XLVIII |issue=14,255}}</ref> While the founders of the game were all familiar with or played rugby, including Cusack and Davin, few had played Irish football as it was so rare outside of the South-West, though the influence of this football on the founders was obvious, this is most likely the "football kicking under the Irish rules" that Thomas Croke later recalled in [[County Cork]].<ref name="Corrigan 2009 p. " />

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 |quote  = Irish football is a great game and worth going a long way to see when played on a fairly laid out ground and under proper rules. Many old people say just hurling exceeded it as a trial of men. I would not care to see either game now as the rules stand at present. I may say there are no rules and therefore those games are often dangerous.
 |source = [[Maurice Davin]], 1884<ref name="Corrigan 2009 p. " />
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Irish historian Garnham, citing R.M. Peter's Irish Football Annual of 1880, argued that Gaelic football did not exist before the 1880s and curious about the origin of the distinctive features believed that clubs from England in 1868 most likely introduced elements of their codes including the "[[Mark (Australian rules football)|mark]]" (a free kick to players who cleanly catch the ball, which was a feature of the matches played in the 1880s), lack of offside and scoring by kicking between the upright posts. Unable to identify the source of these peculiar traits he concluded that they must have been introduced by Trinity, Cambridge (those known as the 1858 [[Cambridge Rules]]) and [[Blackheath F.C.|Blackheath]] (1862 club rules).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peter |first=Richard |title=The origins and development of football in Ireland: being a reprint of R.M. Peter's Irish football annual of 1880 |publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation |year=1999 |isbn=0-901905-93-3 |publication-place=Belfast |page=4 |oclc=43029034}}</ref>

[[County Limerick]] was a stronghold of the game in the 1880s, and the Commercials Club in [[Limerick]], founded by employees of Cannock's Drapery Store, was one of the first to impose a set of rules, which was adapted by other clubs in the city.<ref name="orejan" /> These rules are believed to be the basis for the rules that were later adopted by the GAA and appear to have contained some of the Victorian Rules of 1866. It is not known how or when these Victorian Rules reached Ireland, though many of the goldrush Irish immigrants returned to Ireland during the 1870s and 1880s as the colonial fortunes faded. At a similar point in time, the same football rules were proposed as an alternative to those of soccer and rugby in northern England<ref>Athletic News. 24 August 1881 Pg. 1</ref> but did not take root there. Playing the code under its own rules the club (representing County Limerick) later won the inaugural [[1887 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final]].

English (Association) football started to take hold, especially in [[Ulster]], in the 1880s. By the mid-1880s it had become so popular that it was feared by many to completely displace Irish football.

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 |quote  = Ball-playing, hurling, football kicking, according to Irish rules, 'casting', leaping in various ways, wrestling, handy-grips, top-pegging, leap-frog, rounders, tip-in-the-hat, and all such favourite exercises and amusements amongst men and boys, may now be said to be not only dead and buried, but in several localities to be entirely forgotten and unknown.
 |source = [[Thomas Croke]], 1884 letter to Michael Cusack<ref>Dr. T.W. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel, "Letter from Archbishop Croke to Michael Cusack on the GAA", James Joyce Digital Interpretations, accessed January 11, 2022, https://jamesjoyce.omeka.net/items/show/80 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240730161332/https://jamesjoyce.omeka.net/items/show/80 |date=30 July 2024 }}.</ref>
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Irish football, however, continued its grip on the southern counties. Accounts from 1889 state that the variety of football that was becoming popular in Ireland in 1884 bore little resemblance at all to the [[caid (sport)|old mob football]] and was received by the public as more a hybrid of English and Scotch football.<ref>{{Cite news |date=27 July 1889 |title=Irish Football. |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article200353788 |access-date=8 December 2021 |work=[[The Colonist (Launceston)|The Colonist]] |location=Tasmania, Australia |page=6 |via=National Library of Australia |volume=II |issue=XXX}}</ref>