Underdog Stories / Football history

Why Do Derry City Play in the League of Ireland?

Why does Derry City play in the League of Ireland? A 1972 vote lost by one, 13 years in the wilderness and a border crossing explain it. Here's the full story.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 7, 2026

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On Friday 13 October 1972, Derry City did not lose a match. They weren't relegated. They didn't run out of players. The directors met, looked at the crowds and the bills, and decided to pull out of the Irish League because the club wasn't allowed to play home games at its ground, the Brandywell.

The short answer to why Derry City play in the League of Ireland is this. The Irish League, which since 1922 covers only Northern Ireland, wouldn't let them go home. Every year for 13 years they asked, and every year they were rejected. In 1985 they found a league that would take them. It was in another country.

Chris Horwedel tells the story on Why We Love This Club in the episode "Derry City FC — The Club That Crossed a Border to Survive." This is the version you can read in five minutes, with some checking added.

Why did Derry City leave the Irish League?

Derry City were founded in 1928 and entered the Irish League in 1929, settling at the council-owned Brandywell. They won the league in 1964-65. In the European Cup that year they beat Lyn Oslo, then drew Anderlecht. They withdrew when the IFA ruled the ground wasn't fit to host the tie. Horwedel calls it a theme that would get painfully familiar. Derry could earn something on the pitch and still be told their own ground wasn't available.

Then the Troubles arrived. The Brandywell sits beside the Bogside, and Horwedel is careful on one point. The trouble wasn't usually inside the ground. The danger was in getting there and getting home.

Visiting clubs started to stay away. In 1970 and 1971, Derry had to play its "home" ties against Linfield at Windsor Park in Belfast. On 12 September 1971, Ballymena United's bus was parked in the heart of the Bogside, and when the players came back it had been burned to a shell. Soon after, all the Irish League clubs told Derry to find another ground.

Derry found one in Coleraine, 30 miles away, and played all their home matches there for twelve months. Transport costs rose, the fans didn't follow, and the board said it couldn't keep paying.

Here is the part the romantic version skips. By October 1972 the security forces had concluded the Brandywell was no more dangerous than any other ground in the league. Derry asked to go home anyway. A motion from Portadown to let them was rejected by a single vote, 6-5, with Coleraine abstaining.

Derry supporters suspected sectarianism. Nobody has a signed confession from the clubs that voted no. But the safety argument was gone, the vote went the same way, and Derry drew its own conclusion. Bloody Sunday had happened that January, within a mile or two of the Brandywell. Nobody in that city was short of reasons to feel shut out.

What happened in Derry City's 13 wilderness years?

The Brandywell didn't close. It hosted dog racing a few nights a week, and on Saturday mornings a junior team played there. Volunteers kept the club alive. Former players joined other Irish League clubs or League of Ireland sides such as Athlone Town, Dundalk and Finn Harps.

The club could probably have found another ground, and Horwedel says so. It didn't want one. One of the men behind the revival said it became a matter of principle to play in the Brandywell. The question had stopped being about a league place. It was whether a club from that part of Derry was allowed to play at home.

Derry also tried to prove the ground was safe. In August 1981 they invited Coleraine for a friendly, and then Cliftonville. Both games passed off peacefully. It didn't change any votes.

Why are Derry City in the League of Ireland?

Because somebody finally looked south. A group including Terry Harkin, Tony O'Doherty, Eamon McLaughlin and Eddie Mahon had worked on the project since 1983. Horwedel says they organised friendlies against League of Ireland clubs such as Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians, and the crowds showed there was a senior club waiting to happen. They applied in 1984 and got in at the second attempt.

The Irish FA made one more try to block it. Its president, Harry Cavan, claimed FIFA rules didn't allow a club to cross the border and play in another country's league. One account says Cavan and others worried that other Northern clubs would follow. The move needed special dispensation from the IFA and FIFA, and in the end Derry got it.

Then came 8 September 1985. Derry beat Home Farm of Dublin 3-1 at the Brandywell in a League Cup tie. Eight thousand fans piled in. There were no police inside the ground. Mahon's reason was that they would have caused more problems than they'd have solved. Derry got UEFA's permission to steward its own games.

“Derry City matter because they show that a football club's home is not merely the address printed beside the fixture.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

The move south didn't end the hassle. Supporters' buses to away games in the Republic were often attacked by sectarian gangs as they passed through loyalist areas.

How did Derry City win a treble so fast?

Quickly. Under Noel King the club won the First Division Shield in its first season and the First Division in 1987. King's squad was oddly international for a restored club. It included the Brazilian Nelson da Silva and the South African Owen Da Gama.

Then Jim McLaughlin came home. His side lost the 1988 FAI Cup final to Dundalk after a disputed penalty. Horwedel says they answered with one of the great seasons in Irish club football. In 1988-89 they beat Dundalk 4-0 in the League Cup final and won the league. The FAI Cup final against Cork City finished 0-0, and Derry won the replay 1-0. It was a domestic treble, and no other League of Ireland club has done it.

One correction. The episode says Derry won another league title in 1977. They didn't join the league until 1985, so that's a slip. The second title came in 1996-97.

What is the Northwest Derby, and what happened against PSG?

Finn Harps are based in Ballybofey, County Donegal, about 30 miles from Derry. Horwedel describes the Northwest Derby as international and intensely local at once. Fans argue for 90 minutes and then run into each other at the shops. In 2003 a playoff between the two decided who stayed in the top flight. The second leg was level late on when Liam Coyle scored in stoppage time and kept Derry up.

In 2006 Stephen Kenny's side went on their best European run. The episode's account of the first tie is garbled, so here is the record. Derry beat two-time UEFA Cup winners IFK Göteborg 2-0 on aggregate, with a Sean Hargan header away and a Stephen O'Flynn penalty at home. They won 5-1 away at Gretna and went through 7-3 on aggregate.

Paris Saint-Germain came next. The first leg at the Brandywell on 14 September 2006 finished 0-0. A Killian Brennan shot hit the woodwork. PSG won the second leg at the Parc des Princes 2-0. Horwedel's point is that a club once treated as a security problem had hosted one of its biggest nights at the ground it refused to leave.

Did Derry City really go bust in 2009?

Close enough. The club's money was in trouble before that. Around the turn of the century, tax debts threatened it, and club president John Hume, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, helped arrange fundraising friendlies with Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Then in 2009 the FAI ended the club's league agreement after officials found secondary, unofficial player contracts. Derry were relegated to the First Division for entering administration. A new board led by businessman Philip O'Doherty rebuilt the club. Kenny stayed and won the 2010 First Division title to take Derry back up.

Horwedel counts two league titles, six FAI Cups and a record 11 League Cups since the move south. In 2022 more than 20,000 Derry supporters went to the FAI Cup final, the best-supported final ever.

Why does the Brandywell matter so much to Derry City?

The ground sits in a hollow with houses and the city cemetery rising around it. Fans without tickets watch from the hillside. Horwedel says that on big nights people have used double-decker buses to see over the wall, "a transportation strategy not yet included in most stadiums' master plans."

The names carry the memory. It's now the Ryan McBride Brandywell, after the captain who died in 2017 at 27. One stand is named for the striker Mark Farren, who died of cancer in 2016 at 33.

The odd part is that Derry City have never owned it. The council has owned the ground since 1928, and the club has used it under short-term licences. A 1918 law means the council can't let the stadium for more than 12 months, so the licences run for 51 weeks at a time.

That may change. In July 2026 the council's governance committee agreed in principle to sell the ground to the club at market value, to be set by Land and Property Services. The sale would cover the stadium, Showgrounds, Anne Street car park and the greyhound track. It isn't done. Councillors stressed the sale is not yet a done deal and called for consultation with other users. I couldn't find a completed sale, so check the latest before you quote it.

So a club that was shut out for wanting to play at home has rented that home for nearly a century, a week short of a year at a time. Now somebody has to agree a price.