Search: 'Portadown'

Robbie Meredith reports on how teams from the Republic and Northern Ireland are warming up for a new cross-border competition with some amicable friendlies

Appropriately, in an island awash with mythology, the most enduring myth in Irish football is about to be exposed to reality. For a number of years an all-Ireland competition has been prescribed as the cure for the moribund state of domestic football in Ireland, north and south. Now, for the first time since the cross-border Blaxnit Cup was abandoned 25 years ago, competitive all-Ireland football is returning.

Read more…

David Wylie tells us about Glentoran

What was your best moment as a Glentoran fan?
Nothing can beat the euphoria of Sean Arm­strong’s goal against Linfield in the 2000 Irish Cup semi. Sean, nephew of Northern Ireland le­gend Gerry, scored the 96th-minute winner in front of the Windsor Park Kop after Linfield had equalised a couple of min­utes earlier. The Glens went on to win the cup, but memories of the victory over Portadown will always be overshadowed by those of thousands of bluemen rushing back to their seats just in time to see Armstrong head in Hamill’s cross.

Read more…

Monday 1 Airdrie United acquire the rights to Clydebank’s name and seem set to replace them in the Scottish Second Division. “If this takeover goes ahead, a franchise system for Scottish football will have been validated,” says a spokesman for the Clydebank supporters group, who had been hoping to take control of the club themselves. Mick Wadsworth, who left Oldham during last season, is Huddersfield’s new manager.

Read more…

Davy Millar explains why drastic action may be needed to shake up football in Northern Ireland

In what is becoming a time-honoured tradition, the Irish League season entered the final stretch with talk of reorganisation in the air. Towards the end of April, Premiership strugglers and First Division high-fliers were still unsure whether they had been putting in unnecessary effort as haggling continued over proposals to increase the size of each division.

Read more…

Davy Millar's favourite football landmark is not one that you will have heard of, as he explains

Moira is a small village with very few claims to fame. It is the site of an historic battle but, this being Northern Ireland, the locals decided that their village needed something else to distinguish it from everywhere else in Ulster. So, they planted award-winning floral displays, a novelty in a country normally disinterested in flower beds unless that’s where the Semtex is currently hidden, but these have been surpassed by another local attraction – the roundabout.

Read more…