Portadown FC
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| Full name | Portadown Football Club |
|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Ports |
| Founded | 1887 |
| Ground | Shamrock Park |
| Capacity | 2,770 |
| Chairman | Roy McMahon |
| Manager | Niall Currie |
| League | NIFL Premiership |
| 2015–16 | NIFL Premiership, 9th |
| Website | Club home page |
Portadown Football Club is a semi-professional, Northern Irish football club which plays in the NIFL Premiership.
The club was founded in 1887 as a junior team looking to participate in the Mid-Ulster Cup. They eventually joined the Irish League with the help of other local clubs in 1924. They are based in Portadown in County Armagh and play their home games at Shamrock Park. The club's colours are red and white; their home kit consists of red shirts, red shorts and red socks with white trim on all, while their away kit is yellow. The club's main rivals are Glenavon with their derby game being known as the "Mid Ulster Derby". The league fixtures are compiled each season so that one of their league meetings always takes place on Boxing Day. Since the late 1980s the club has also developed a fierce rivalry with Glentoran.
Ronnie McFall served the club for 29 years as manager from 1986 to 2016.
In 1887 the Mid Ulster Football Association was established and in Portadown a young group of men set about creating a football club to participate in the Mid-Ulster Cup. Early meetings of the committee were held in a dimly lit room for the Young Men's Institute in Edwards Street in Portadown where club secretary William Mullen would read the minutes by candlelight. Early games were played at Tavanagh and Ripley's Field, Armagh Road and Old Shamrock Park, located approximately where Clounagh Junior High School is sited. Among the early names to turn out for The Ports were Val Wilson who would later become High Sheriff for County Armagh and Harry Bell, whose father owned brickworks on the Armagh Road.
They won the Irish Junior Cup beating Larne at Grosvenor Park on 18 March 1899. That same season The Ports won their first ever cup double by bringing home the Mid-Ulster Cup for the first time. Portadown retained the trophy the following season and the next five seasons before the outbreak of WWI. The junior game was very strong in the town at the time and The Ports had to compete for talent with teams such as Edenderry Arrows, Greenview from Edgarstown, Portadown Celtic and Parkmount. Portadown is the only one of these clubs to remain. In 1916 the new Irish Intermediate League was formed and Portadown were selected as one of the inaugural clubs for the new competition. However, they were forced to withdraw due to the large number of players who had gone off to fight in the Great War.
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