Shamrock Park

Sixteen thousand people once packed into Shamrock Park . The crowd came for a friendly against Manchester City.

The ground was already eighteen years old when Portadown F.C. moved in, in 1924, and the club has stayed put ever since. It has never carried a sponsor's name. The naming instead attaches to one stand: the MET Steel Stand , built in 2008.

The pitch is the part that keeps coming up. Northern Ireland's women played Sweden here in 2014, after which the Swedish coach criticised the surface publicly. Youth internationals have been staged at Brownstown Road too, against Ukraine and against Wales. A plan to lay 3G was floated in 2022; it did not happen, and Portadown still play on grass.

Not everything at the ground is football. In June 2018 the pitch was given over to the Shamrock Solstice festival. In August 2021 disorder at a match led to one supporter being banned from attending.