Loughgall

Loughgall sits in County Armagh, a village small enough that for decades its football club played several tiers below Northern Ireland's leading sides — until 2022/23, when it won the NIFL Championship and reached the Premiership for the first time, making the village the smallest population centre in Europe with a team in a national top flight.

People had been kicking a ball around the village since 1885, but the club in its current form was put together in 1967, when a group of local residents set it up.

Home matches are played at Lakeview Park on Ballygasey Road — referred to on the club's own site as the Willis CRL Arena — where The Villagers turn out in blue shirts, shorts and socks.

The 2022/23 title was far from the club's first. Loughgall had already won the second tier seven times between 1995 and 2010, under whatever name the division carried at the time, and built up a run of regional silverware alongside it: twelve Bob Radcliffe Cups, three Mid-Ulster Cups, two Irish Intermediate Cups and a Carnegie League Cup.

None of that has translated into Premiership football yet. Since going up, Loughgall is still waiting for a first trophy at the level it spent decades trying to reach.