Newry City AFC

Newry, in County Down, took its football club's name literally. When the town was granted city status, the club — known until then as Newry Town, a name it had carried since its founding in 1918 — renamed itself Newry City FC in 2004. It had already been admitted to the Irish League as a senior side back in 1923.

That version of the club lasted less than a decade. Financial trouble forced its dissolution in September 2012, and within six months supporters had regrouped to found Newry City AFC — a legally separate club with no formal claim on the old one's history, though the two are counted as one continuous story. The current club's own history page lists trophies won under both names together: the NIFL Championship in 2022, the Irish League First Division in 1998, and a Mid-Ulster Cup lifted sixteen times between 1937 and 2023.

One player passed through the old Newry Town before any of that silverware. Pat Jennings, who went on to become Northern Ireland's goalkeeper, started out at the club before his move to Watford in 1963. Locally, the fixture that matters most is against Warrenpoint Town, five miles down the road and also of County Down — a derby the local press has taken to calling the Mourne Ultimatum.

Home games are played at The Showgrounds, officially listed at a capacity of 7,949. Safety rules cut that down sharply, to 2,275, with just 1,080 of those seats.