Lansdowne

Before the Irish Rugby Football Union existed to organise the game, Henry Dunlop put together the Irish Champion Athletic Club in Dublin, and the "Football Club" in the name comes from that moment — 1872, when rugby and association football hadn't yet split into separate words in Ireland, so "football" simply meant whatever was being played. The club carried its founding colours, black, red and yellow hoops with navy shorts, through to its 150th anniversary in 2022 without changing them.

Lansdowne's home ground sits inside the Aviva Stadium complex, a modest strip known as the Back Pitch holding around 1,000. It has taken the Leinster Senior Cup 29 times, more than any other side, stretching from a win in 1890–91 to one in 2023–24. The All-Ireland League has come to Lansdowne only three times — 2012–13, 2014–15, 2017–18 — but the last of those was the season the club swept every competition it entered: league, Bateman Cup, Leinster Senior League Cup and Leinster Senior Cup together, a treble no other Leinster club had managed.

The academy has sent 118 players into the Ireland shirt over the years. Johnny Sexton captained the club side in 1993–94 before any of that international career took shape. Saturdays against Clontarf carry the weight of the Dublin derby, even in a division that also includes Young Munster and St Mary's College.

The club has no popular nickname to go with its stripes — no "Hoops," no "Blacks" — it is simply Lansdowne. Since 2023 the junior and youth sections have had a home of their own at the former YMCA grounds in Sandymount.