The numbers of people playing soccer in Ireland continues to show a steady growth, according to a survey released by the FAI yesterday. An increase of just under 14,000 was achieved over the past three years.

There has been an even more dramatic growth in the number of registered teams with a jump of around 15 per cent to 10,038 in the same period.

Viewed in the longer term, the growth of the game in Ireland is even more startling with the number of clubs around the country almost three times what it was 10 years ago, while the numbers of registered players has shown a similarly dramatic increase. The latter figure was 65,000 in 1986 and at the end of last year it had risen to 175,320, of which 50,000 had been added in the last five years.