The influence of alcohol addiction in the untimely death of George Best has been well chronicled in recent weeks. Yet, according to research by a University of Ulster academic, soccer players have been battling with the bottle ever since the professional game was established at the end of the 19^th century.

Dr Neal Garnham, a lecturer in the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages, has just published a study of footballers and alcohol in 1890s England and Ireland. In it he argues that professional footballers and heavy drinking is very far from being a modern phenomenon.

He cites the example of a professional player with Belfast club, Distillery, who received a life ban from the game in 1901 for persistent drunkenness after his club, unable to curb his behaviour, referred his case to the Irish Football Association.

There are many other cases of players for English clubs appearing before the courts for misbehaviour arising out of drinking sessions. One player, John Bell of Everton, suggested in 1898 that “many a man has had a brilliant career cut short by over indulgence”.

Dr Garnham, who conducted the study with Pamela Dixon of the University of Durham, outlined a number of factors which nurtured the relationship between players and booze.

The drink industry was vital in the development of the professional game, with teams like Everton and Blackburn Rovers based in pubs or hotels. Liverpool FC grew out of a dispute between a sponsoring brewer and the already established Everton club. Two Irish clubs, Distillery and Avoniel, grew directly from distillery works teams.  Many early professionals supplemented their wages by managing public houses.

Dr Garnham added: “Even in the 1890s players were relatively well paid and had extensive leisure time. The result was that they resorted to the established working class pastime of the period – drinking.  Drinking was an established part of working-class culture. Professional footballers – then as now – simply had the time and money to indulge in it more than most.”

Leading players in England could earn between £2 10s and £4 a week. At Southampton players were offered £8 each in bonuses for a win in a third round FA Cup tie. Even in Ireland, where wages were considerably lower, during the season a player’s wage was more than five times that of an agricultural labourer.

At least two members of Aston Villa’s double winning team of the 1890s died of alcohol related illnesses in their 30s, although it is believed that their over-indulgence came when they finished playing and began running public houses.

Aston Villa tried to curb players’ drinking by providing a club house with smoking, reading and snooker rooms in 1892, but five years later players were more often to be found in a nearby pub. Eventually the club was reduced to writing to one landlord asking him not to serve the club’s players.

At Southampton the club directors arranged a series of entertainments – ranging from tea with the directors to attending the local music hall – to distract players from drinking.

The Irish Football Association shunned alcohol and it was not until 1907 that it agreed that players could have a drink with their meals after international matches. Bars at matches were not tolerated until a much later date.

One writer in 1896 noted that many people thought that a professional footballer was “a person beneath contempt – a vagabond who spends the whole of his time in a public house except for an hour and a half, when he is called upon to earn his wages”.

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