<P> By the 1870s, Rugby and Association football had started to become popular in Ireland . Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby (see the Developments in the 1850s section, above). The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely . Traditional forms of caid had begun to give way to a "rough - and - tumble game" which allowed tripping . </P> <P> There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884 . The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as hurling and to reject imported games like Rugby and Association football . The first Gaelic football rules were drawn up by Maurice Davin and published in the United Ireland magazine on February 7, 1887 . Davin's rules showed the influence of games such as hurling and a desire to formalise a distinctly Irish code of football . The prime example of this differentiation was the lack of an offside rule (an attribute which, for many years, was shared only by other Irish games like hurling, and by Australian rules football). </P> <P> The International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) was founded in 1886, but rifts were beginning to emerge in the code . Professionalism had already begun to creep into the various codes of football . </P> <P> In England, by the 1890s, a long - standing Rugby Football Union ban on professional players was causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England were working class and could not afford to take time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries . This was not very different from what had occurred ten years earlier in soccer in Northern England but the authorities reacted very differently in the RFU, attempting to alienate the working class support in Northern England . In 1895, following a dispute about a player being paid broken time payments, which replaced wages lost as a result of playing rugby, representatives of the northern clubs met in Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). The new body initially permitted only various types of player wage replacements . However, within two years, NRFU players could be paid, but they were required to have a job outside sport . </P>

Who was thought to be the first to play soccer