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 In 1923, at a time when the home nations had withdrawn from FIFA, the FAI was recognised by FIFA as the governing body of the Irish Free State on the condition that it changed its name to the Football Association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.
Irish Boundary Commission
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 was enacted during the height of the War of Independence and partitioned the island into two separate Home Rule territories of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to be called Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. In its determination of this border, the Parliament of the United Kingdom heard the arguments of the Irish Unionist Party, but not those of most of the elected representatives of the Irish nationalist population. Sinn Féin refused to recognise any legitimate role of that Parliament in Irish affairs and declined to attend it, leaving only the Irish Parliamentary Party, whose representation at Westminster had been reduced to miniscule size at the 1918 General Election, present at the debates. James Craig's brother told the British House of Commons unambiguously that the six northeastern counties were the largest possible area that unionists could "hold".