immigrants returned to Ireland during the 1870s and 1880s as the colonial fortunes faded. Playing the code under its own rules the club (representing County Limerick) later won the inaugural 1887 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final. English (Association) football started to take hold, especially in Ulster, in the 1880s. By the mid-1880s it had become so popular that it was feared by many to completely displace Irish football. Irish football however, continued its grip on the southern counties. Accounts from 1889 state that the variety of football that was becoming popular in Ireland in 1884 bore little resemblance at all to the old mob football and was received by the public as more a hybrid of English and Scotch football. Codification and Administration Irish forms of football were not formally arranged into an organised playing code by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) until 1884 with the rules widely distributed in 1887. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as hurling and to reject "foreign" (particularly English) imports. The first Gaelic football rules, showing the influence of hurling (and incorporating some of the Victorian Rules of 1866 and 1877) represented the strong desire to differentiate from association football (and rugby)—for example in their lack of an offside rule. The rules were first drawn up by Maurice Davin in 1884 and later published in the United Ireland magazine on 7 February 1887. The original rules bear many similarities to modern football with the requirement to kick, handpass and the basic scoring system, however the original rules also included many Australian features including additional scoring posts (removed later in 1910). The code had already begun to diverge, with the mark being deprecated, the soccer ball being adopted, and carrying the ball not allowed, as such there was no requirement to bounce or solo the ball carrying the ball remained illegal until the turn of the 20th century. The game was intended to promote peace and harmony, rejecting the violence of other football codes, and Davin even included a requirement for players to hold hands with their opponents though this practice fell out of favour. The first game of Gaelic Football under GAA rules (developed by Maurice Davin) was played near Callan, Co Kilkenny in February 1885. From 1886 the GAA banned tackling. GAA rules of 1887 The widely published GAA rules were as follows: 1. The ground for full teams (21