The Northern Ireland men's national football team represents Northern Ireland in international association football. From 1882 to 1950, all of Ireland was represented by a single side, the Ireland national football team, organised by the Irish Football Association (IFA). In 1921, the jurisdiction of the IFA was reduced to Northern Ireland following the secession of clubs in the soon-to-be Irish Free State, although its team remained the national team for all of Ireland until 1950, and used the name Ireland until the 1970s. The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) organises the separate Republic of Ireland national football team.
The Irish Football Association (IFA) is the governing body for association football in Northern Ireland. It organised the Ireland national football team from 1880 to 1950, which after 1954, became the Northern Ireland national football team.
Linfield Football Club is a Northern Irish professional football club based in south Belfast which plays in the NIFL Irish Premiership – the highest level of the Irish League. The fourth-oldest club on the island of Ireland, Linfield was founded in 1886 by workers at the Ulster Spinning Company's Linfield Mill. Since 1905, the club's home ground has been Windsor Park, which is also the home of the Northern Ireland national team and is the largest football stadium in Northern Ireland. The club's badge displays Windsor Castle, in reference to the ground's namesake.Linfield are also the World’s most successful club, in terms of league titles won. They have 56 league titles, the last being won in the 2021/22 season.
The Irish Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly referred to as the Irish Cup is the primary football knock-out cup competition in Northern Ireland. Inaugurated in 1881, it is the fourth-oldest national cup competition in the world. Prior to the break-away from the Irish Football Association by clubs from what would become the Irish Free State in 1921, the Irish Cup was the national cup competition for the whole of Ireland.
Lawrence Sanchez is a Northern Irish football manager and former international footballer.
Windsor Park is a football stadium in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is the home ground of Linfield who own the land the stadium is built on, while the Irish Football Association own and operate the stadium and pay Linfield an annual rental fee for the use of the land on behalf of the Northern Ireland national football team. The stadium is usually where the Irish Cup final is played.
Association football in Northern Ireland, widely known as football or sometimes as soccer, is one of the most popular sports in Northern Ireland. The governing body in Northern Ireland is the Irish Football Association (IFA). Gaelic football, rugby union and association football are the most popular sports in Northern Ireland.
Mourneview Park is a football stadium in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and is the home ground of NIFL Premiership club Glenavon. The stadium holds 4,160 and was originally built in 1895. The 2008–09 Irish League Cup, 2010–11 Irish League Cup and 2020-21 Irish Cup finals were held at the stadium.
The Ireland national football team represented the island of Ireland in association football from 1882 until 1950. It was organised by the Irish Football Association (IFA), and is the fourth oldest international team in the world. It mainly played in the British Home Championship against England, Scotland and Wales. Though often vying with Wales to avoid the wooden spoon, Ireland won the Championship in 1914, and shared it with England and Scotland in 1903.
For the equivalent tournament in the Republic of Ireland, see FAI Women's Cup.
The 2011–12 Irish Cup was the 132nd edition of the Irish Cup, Northern Ireland's premier football knock-out cup competition.. The competition began on 17 September 2011 with the first round and ended on 5 May 2012 with the final.
The 2012–13 IFA Premiership was the 5th season of the IFA Premiership, the highest level of league football in Northern Ireland, and the 112th season of Irish league football overall.
The Big Two derby, also referred to simply as the Big Two or Bel Classico, is the name given to the Irish League association football derby between Belfast clubs, Linfield and Glentoran. The derby is also sometimes referred to as the Belfast derby. They are the two most successful and most supported clubs in Irish League Football. They traditionally face each other on Boxing Day each year which usually attracts the largest Irish Premiership attendance of the season. They regularly play each other in the league, and have contested more cup finals together than any other two clubs. They also make up two of the three clubs that have competed in every season of the Irish League's top flight since its inception in 1890 – neither club ever suffering relegation.
David Armstrong is a Northern Irish professional footballer who plays for Mid-Ulster Football League side Ballymacash Rangers F.C. He previously played for IFA Premiership side Dungannon Swifts, as a defender. He began his career with Scottish Premier League side Heart of Midlothian and had loan spells at Crusaders, Cowdenbeath and Raith Rovers. Armstrong has represented Northern Ireland at under-17, 19 and 21 levels.
The 2012–13 Irish Cup was the 133rd edition of the Irish Cup, Northern Ireland's premier football knock-out cup competition. The competition began on 15 September 2012 with the first round and ended on 4 May 2013 with the final. The cup was sponsored by JJB Sports until October 2012, when the company went into administration. The competition remained without a principal sponsor, but the final was known as the Marie Curie Irish Cup final, after the IFA awarded the naming rights for the final to the charity Marie Curie Cancer Care.
The 2014–15 Irish Cup was the 135th edition of the Irish Cup, the premier knock-out cup competition in Northern Irish football since its introduction in 1881. The competition began on 23 August 2014 with the first round, and concluded on 2 May 2015 with the final. For the first time since 1995, the Oval was chosen as the final venue following the discovery of damage to a stand at Windsor Park during the stadium's redevelopment.
The Northern Ireland Football League, known historically, and still colloquially, as the Irish League, is the national football league of Northern Ireland. The Irish League was originally formed in 1890, with the league in its current format created in 2013 to assume independent collective management of the top three levels of the Northern Ireland football league system; namely the Premiership, Championship and Premier Intermediate League.
The Northern Ireland Women's Football Association (NIWFA) is the governing body of women's association football in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1977.
Sunday football in Northern Ireland has been a controversial issue. Until 2008, the Irish Football Association (IFA) under IFA Article 27, prohibited any clubs affiliated with them from playing association football matches on Sunday. The ban initially came from various government legislation, both local and national. Northern Ireland's Protestant Christian majority's observance of Sunday as the Sabbath, was also a major factor which amounted to a continuance of the observance of tradition for a lot longer than in the rest of the UK. It was also a way to combat a perceived encroachment on their culture by Catholics. Since the abolition of the ban, teams can play matches on Sunday if they have mutual agreement, although some teams such as Linfield have club rules against such games.
The 2015–16 Irish Cup was the 136th edition of the Irish Cup, the premier knock-out cup competition in Northern Irish football since its introduction in 1881. The competition began on 18 August 2015 with the first round and concluded with the final at Windsor Park on 7 May 2016. The cup was sponsored by Tennent's Lager, the competition's first title sponsor since 2012.
