Uncovering Paul Ramsey's Northern Ireland Shirt

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Uncovering Paul Ramsey's Northern Ireland Shirt

Paul Ramsey played 322 games for us between 1981 and 1991 as a full-back or midfield player, becoming City captain in 1987.

2025-04-19T15:00+01:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

19 Apr, 2025

Uncovering Paul Ramsey's Northern Ireland Shirt

Paul Ramsey played 322 games for us between 1981 and 1991 as a full-back or midfield player, becoming City captain in 1987.

John Hutchinson

2025-04-19T15:00+01:00

Uncovering Paul Ramsey's Northern Ireland Shirt

Paul Ramsey played 322 games for us between 1981 and 1991 as a full-back or midfield player, becoming City captain in 1987.

John Hutchinson

2025-04-19T15:00+01:00

Uncovering Paul Ramsey's Northern Ireland Shirt

Paul Ramsey played 322 games for us between 1981 and 1991 as a full-back or midfield player, becoming City captain in 1987.

John Hutchinson

2025-04-19T15:00+01:00

Uncovering Paul Ramsey's Northern Ireland Shirt

Paul Ramsey played 322 games for us between 1981 and 1991 as a full-back or midfield player, becoming City captain in 1987.

John Hutchinson

2025-04-19T15:00+01:00

Paul, a Northern Ireland international, has loaned this shirt to the Club. He wore it in a UEFA European Championship qualifying match against England at Windsor Park on 1 April, 1987.

Born in Derry, Paul won 14 caps for his home country. This makes him one of a select group of 13 players who represented Northern Ireland while on our books.

Paul is also one of three City players to have been selected in Northern Ireland FIFA World Cup squads. Willie Cunningham went to the finals in Sweden in 1958. John O’Neill, Paul’s Leicester team-mate, also attended the 1982 World Cup in Spain and the 1986 contest in Mexico. Paul, too, travelled to Mexico that year.

Paul played his first three full internationals in the 1983/84 season, which was City’s first back in the top flight since 1980/81. These were European Championship qualifiers against Austria in Belfast and West Germany in Hamburg, together with a friendly fixture vs. Scotland in Belfast, with O’Neill also in the team. Northern Ireland won all three matches.

Four more caps followed the next year, against Israel, England, Spain and Turkey. O’Neill also played in all four. The only defeat was against Bobby Robson’s England in Belfast. However, another Foxes team-mate, Gary Lineker, who had recently won his first Three Lions cap, didn’t feature that evening.

The shirt worn against England in 1987.

At the start of the following season (1985/86), in the build-up to the World Cup at the end of the campaign, Paul featured in a World Cup qualifying match (a 0-0 draw) against Turkey in Izmir, but then sustained a bad knee injury at Coventry which sidelined him for the rest of the season – apart from one match, on 26 April, at Old Trafford against Manchester United.

Northern Ireland manager Billy Bingham nevertheless selected Paul for the international fixture against Morocco on 23 April, even though he hadn’t played a game since his injury over seven months earlier.

Despite this long lay-off, Paul was selected for the squad to travel to Mexico for the 1986 World Cup and, although he didn’t appear during the tournament, it was surely a great experience.

Paul’s next caps were against Israel in a friendly in Tel Aviv in February 1987 and in three European Championship qualifiers. The first was against England in Belfast six weeks later, when he wore the shirt illustrated here, as Lineker scored in a 2-0 Three Lions victory.

The other two were against Yugoslavia, in April 1987 and October 1987. Paul’s final international outing was a World Cup qualifying defeat against Spain in Belfast in February 1989.

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