Top Ulster club abandons rugby for drilling

Men of Ulster are setting an ‘example to the entire Empire’, Carson claims

Sir Edward Carson has expressed his appreciation to one of country’s leading rugby clubs, which has withdrawn from all competitive action to allow its members concentrate on drilling with the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Last week, the North of Ireland Football Club issued a statement which acknowledged its premier position, along with Dublin University, at the forefront of rugby in Ireland. It’s members were all drawn from the ‘public school and University class, sons of the leading Belfast merchants and professional men’ and following the largest general meeting in the club’s history, they had ‘enthusiastically decided to cancel all football matches from 1 January next, so that the members might be able to give up their entire time on Saturdays to drilling and military training’.

The meeting at which this decision was taken was attended by, amongst others, at least 15 men who had represented the Irish international side, five of whom are former Irish captains.

The chairman of the North of Ireland club acknowledged that the decision would place a financial strain on the club involving, as it does, a loss of gate money, but he stressed that it constituted a practical way of showing their ‘devotion’ to Sir Edward Carson and the unionist cause. It was suggested that the move came from the players themselves and was not a response to pressure from political leaders.

The North of Ireland Football club has decided to opt out of competitions, so that 'members might be able to give up their entire time on Saturdays to drilling and military training'. This picture shows Edward Carson reviewing a massive parade of Ulster Volunteers at the Agricultural Show Grounds in Balmoral in September. (Photo: Illustrated London News [London, England], 4 October 1913)

Where the North of Ireland Club has led, other Ulster-based clubs are almost certain to follow and it is widely anticipated that it could lead to the virtual abandonment of rugby in Belfast and Ulster during the winter months.

Sir Edward Carson has expressed his gratitude to the North of Ireland club for the sacrifice they have made, citing it as a ‘splendid example to all of the necessity of laying aside at any inconvenience everything in order to maintain the one great object we all have in view.

‘For my own part’, Carson continued, ‘the men of Ulster are setting an example to the entire Empire, and are showing by their action that no coalition of politicians can ever filch away those precious rights within the British constitution, which it has taken centuries to win, and which, at all events, we think it is worthwhile to maintain, even by forcible resistance.’