Portadown

Portadown sits at the junction where several railway lines once met, a crossing point the town itself was built around and came to call the Hub of the North. The station's colours, red and white, passed onto the football club that took the town's name, and Portadown have worn them ever since at Shamrock Park, a ground that holds 2,770.

The club traces its beginnings to 1887, and its first honour came young: the Irish Junior Cup in 1899, before senior football had properly established itself in the town. The Gold Cup followed across four decades apart — 1933, 1938, 1972 and 1978 — a trophy the club kept returning to win long after first lifting it.

The sharpest spell came at the turn of the 1990s and into the 2000s. Portadown took the Irish League title in 1990, 1991, 1996 and 2002, and paired the first of those with an Irish Cup win the same season. Two more Irish Cups followed, in 1999 and 2005, the last of them the club's most recent Cup success.

Since then the finals have kept coming without the same ending. Portadown reached the Irish Cup final again in 2010 and 2015, and lost both, adding to defeats from 2000 and 2002. The Irish League Cup, won once, in 2009, remains the club's last major trophy.