In the late 19th century, many shopworkers would have come from smallholder families as shop work was one of the few occupations open to rural Catholics with some education who had no land to inherit.

Shopworkers were very active in nationalist and cultural organisations like the IRB, the Gaelic League and the GAA.

The Limerick Commercials team that beat Dundalk Young Irelands in the 1887 All-Ireland football final (played on a field known as the "Big Bank" in Clonskeagh C. Dublin on 29 April 1888) was: Denis Corbett (goalkeeper and captain), Timothy Fitzgibbon, William Gunning, Richard Breen, John Hyland, Thomas McNamara, William J Spain (winner of an All-Ireland hurling medal with Dublin in 1889), Patrick J Corbett, Michael Slattery, Jeremiah R Kennedy, Michael Casey, James Mulqueen, Malachi O'Brien, Patrick Kelly, Timothy Kennedy, Philip Keating, William Cleary, Robert Normoyle, Patrick S Reeves, Thomas Keating, Thomas McMahon.

They won a number of City Division junior football titles during the 1950s and appeared in a final for the last time in 1961.

[citation needed] Young Irelands and Commercials joined in the 1950s as sister clubs with Young Irelands running the hurling and Commercials the football but with no field of their own and a hit and miss underage structure, they struggled to survive until they finally folded up around 1990.