Sunday football in Northern Ireland

Sunday football in Northern Ireland has been a controversial issue. Until 2008, the Irish Football Association (IFA) under IFA Article 27, prohibited any clubs affiliated with them from playing association football matches on Sunday. The ban initially came from Northern Ireland's Protestant Christian majority's observance of Sunday as the Sabbath (a day of rest), but was also a way to combat a perceived encroachment on their culture by Catholics. Since the abolition of the ban, teams can play matches on Sunday if they have mutual agreement, although some teams such as Linfield have club rules against such games.

The Northern Ireland national team also had a policy of not playing on Sundays. This policy was later amended to allow Northern Ireland to play on Sundays away from home before being unofficially suspended due to changes in UEFA rules regarding playing dates for international competition qualifiers. On 29 March 2015, the national team played their first home match on a Sunday against Finland.

Prior to the 1930s, the IFA had no official ban on Sunday football. However, unofficially no matches were scheduled on Sundays. In 1898, the Leinster Football Association requested permission for matches on Sunday, which was unanimously rejected by the IFA as "very detrimental to the interests of the game". In 1901, the Munster Football Association made a similar request which was also turned down. It is not known when the official ban on Sunday football was instituted but it is known that it was created in the 1930s. The arguments in favour of the ban when was introduced are not recorded, but it is known that the nationalist and predominantly Catholic Gaelic Athletic Association decided to play games on Sundays and the unionist and predominantly Protestant IFA felt that this was an encroachment on their "soccer territory" and their Protestant culture. It has been stated by historians that it might also have been due to strict Protestant sabbatarianism that led to the ban. When the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) broke away from the IFA in 1921 following allegations of the IFA having an alleged bias in favour of Belfast clubs, one of their first actions was to permit football being played on Sunday under their jurisdiction. While the IFA maintained a ban on Sunday football for all senior and junior men's football, the independent Northern Ireland Women's Football Association (NIWFA) played their matches on Sundays.

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