Soccer Post - Junior Football

Take a bow the stars of 2008/09
Junior Football News - Author: Administrator (Posted 1 year, 3 months, 1 week, 3 days, 5 minutes ago)

HISTORIC: Kevin Lawlor led Immaculata to a breathtaking quadruple this season
By Maxie Swain
THE football writers recently bestowed the ‘junior club of the year’ award on newly-crowned Intermediate Cup champions Knockbreda – but the competition for the honour was fiercely contested.
And feeling hard done by perhaps is Immaculata, the all-conquering west Belfast outfit who stand on the brink of a simply breathtaking four-trophy haul this season.
Prior to entering the Amateur League, widely regarded as the best league for junior football in the country, little was known of ‘The Mac’.
Certainly few outside the west of the capital were prepared to countenance the carnage manager Kevin Lawlor felt sure his side would wreak.
But having landed an historic double in the form of the two most coveted cups in junior football – the Junior Shield and Junior Cup – the Mac defied the odds to lift the Clarence Cup last Wednesday – a feat which is all the more amazing considering it is contested by intermediate as well as junior clubs.
Meanwhile back on the more modest plains of the Amateur League’s Division 2C, Immaculata are closing in on the title.
Sitting just four points off the summit, the Mac, victims of their own success with respect to a backlog of fixtures, face four games inside seven days which will surely see the club crowned champions in their first ever season in the Amateur League.
Nevertheless, Knockbreda’s achievement of lifting the WKD Intermediate Cup was deemed as the most impressive feat in junior football.
And faced with the roll call of big-name scalps Hugh Sinclair’s side claimed en route to glory, it is understandable why.
Knockbreda have harboured big ambitions for a long time, without ever finding the right manager to lead them to the Promised Land.
But in Hugh Sinclair, one of the brightest young managers in the country, the Upper Braniel Road side seem to have struck gold.
’Breda plan to move up into the Irish League’s Championship next season and they signed off from their days in the Amateur League in real style.
Sinclair took over last October with the club seemingly in disarray but a startling upturn in form, culminating in back-to-back wins over Portadown and Donegal Celtic, gifted the club their first ever Intermediate Cup – a competition regularly touted as the toughest to win outside senior football.
Elsewhere, there was a stunning return to form for Newington Youth Club. Eamonn McCarthy’s north Belfast outfit were dethroned by Downpatrick last season but claimed back the Amateur League’s top prize, the Premier title, to restore their reputation as the finest team outside the Irish League.
Abbey Villa meanwhile pressed their case to be included in the shortlist for junior club of the year, running away with the Division 1A title following hot on the heels of their Border Cup success a year earlier.
Since the appointment of brothers Mark and Graham Bailie, the Millisle side have been a totally transformed proposition.
Their cup heroics of last year, when it took an in-form Donegal Celtic to oust them from the Irish Cup at the quarter-final stages, hinted at the new-found belief at the club.
And that was followed up by an almost flawless season which saw the club wrap up the title to join the Amateur League’s elite for only the second time in their history.
Last but not least, Shankill United’s efforts in the Amateur League have shone like a beacon.
Like Rathfern Rangers the season before, Shankill joined the intermediate ranks of the Amateur League as 2A champions but proved too hot to handle for the basement division, soaring to the summit of the division after Christmas before clinching back-to-back promotions as champions to move into 1A.