Northern Ireland national football team
In 1920, Ireland was partitioned into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. In 1922, Southern Ireland gained independence as the Irish Free State, later to become a republic under the name of Ireland. Amid these political upheavals, a rival football association, the Football Association of Ireland, emerged in Dublin in 1921 and organised a separate league and international team. In 1923, at a time when the home nations had withdrawn from FIFA, the FAI was recognised by FIFA as the governing body of the Irish Free State on the condition that it changed its name to the Football Association of the Irish Free State. The Irish FA continued to organise its national team on an all-Ireland basis.
Decolonization
The independence movement in Ireland and the 19th and early 20th century was marked by occasional outbursts of violence, culminating in the small-scale Easter Rising of 1916 and the much larger Irish War of Independence of 1919 to 1921. It was resolved when London gave independence to the Catholic regions of southern Ireland, and kept control of Protestant Northern Ireland.