Home success a super start to league season

Published on 19/08/2012 21:49

“I ATTENDED the launch of the Danske Bank Premiership with Sean Mackle in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall.

“It was basically a day of photographs for the press but also a chance to catch up on the gossip and transfer rumours around the Irish League.

“We opted to round off the launch with a trip to Nando’s for some grub.

“It was encouraging to see the support put in by Danske Bank as the official league backer, with Adidas on board as matchball sponsor.

“Talking to people from other teams you could get a sense of the level of expectation following clubs spending the summer strengthening the squads.

“As usual, however, it will be a case of trying to stop Linfield.

“The first round of games kicked off on Saturday and should be seen as a great advert for the domestic product.

“The season’s first upset arrived with Ballymena United’s defeat of Linfield.

“Any player or manager will tell you the importance of the season’s opening game, with the result more valuable than the performance.

“Therefore, it was great starting with three points against Lisburn Distillery and next up we have another hard game away to Donegal Celtic.

“I am sure we can count on our usual great support to cheer us on the road.

“Speaking as a player and fan, the Irish League has always been the subject of limited coverage or highlights in the past on the television.

“Therefore, it is great to see the Final Score 2 online programme put out by BBC Sport.

“It offers extended coverage and interviews and I think it is a much-needed step for the Irish League towards promoting the quality of the football and encouraging more supporters.

“I also know the online podcast called The Social Club NI covers everything related to Irish League football in a relaxed and enjoyable way by some of the journalists.

“I would like to wish Stephen Acheson all the best following his move to Loughgall.

“He is a very good young player who can only improve with regular first-team football.

“I have assured him we will take good care of a heartbroken Matthew Paget in his absence!

“Finally, most of you will be aware that Kevin Braniff recently signed a long-term deal with the club.

“This is a great bit of business for Portadown and Kevin, in my opinion, remains the most gifted player in the Irish League.”

Sport

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Home success a super start to league season

Top stories

Sport