Mulryne Cup

The Mulryne Cup was a competition organised by the AFGM between 1929 and 1953. The first domestic competition in Mindano, it was highly prestiged by teams until the establishment of the National Cup in 1936. The growth of professionalism in the game, culminating in the establishment of a National League in 1942, saw the Mulryne Cup decline in importance; only three teams entered its final season, and it was quietly discontinued.

History
The competition that would eventually become known as the Mulryne Cup was first proposed in a meeting of the AFGM, four days after the organisation was itself established. The ten members unanimously agreed that a competition be organised as soon as possible; four weeks in August 1929 were set aside for what was at the time referred to as 'The Football Cup of Mindano'. Lemuel Mulryne, a businessman who owned a significant portion of the north-eastern part of Welbury (which would eventually become the town of Mulrynesborough), donated a trophy to be awarded to the winners, and by the time the first matches were played, the Mulryne Cup had settled on a name.

The problems which would eventually see the Mulryne Cup come to an end were a result of the situation in the national game when the competition was established. At the time, there were only ten registered football clubs in the country, all of them strictly amateur and all based in the far south of the country, around the industrial cities of Southeringdale and Welbury. As the game's reach grew, so did the scope of the Mulryne Cup, eventually coming to encompass the entirety of the Southern region of Mindano, but attempts to grow further were blocked. The first team from outside the Southern region to register with the AFGM was Port Victoria in 1931. They competed in the Mulryne Cup for two seasons, but after Brylow withdrew from the 1932 tournament unable to raise the funds to travel to the west coast, it was agreed to limit the tournament's entry to teams from the south.

The Mulryne Cup entered a period of critical decline during the 1936 season, when it expelled Welbury Steel - at that point by far the most successful team in the competition's history - for prioritising the rival National Cup. Defending champions Southeringdale Town F.C., who had also entered the National Cup, resigned from the Mulryne Cup in protest. Welbury Steel were permitted to compete again from the 1937 season onwards, and did so until the 1939 season, but Southeringdale Town never entered the tournament again, and as the National Cup grew, an increasing number of teams chose not to take part in the Mulryne Cup. By 1942, the cup was contested by just eight teams.

For its final decade, the Mulryne Cup remained low-profile but steady, reduced to five clubs after the 1950 season after a series of dissolutions. The 1953 season made it clear that the cup had no future; only three teams entered, with one - the defeated semi-finalist Engineers F.C. - dissolving before the final was played. The AFGM was quietly wound up before the 1954 season.