In this mid-week’s Northern Irish cup action, there were two notable upsets of Premiership sides by top-half Championship teams. Niall Currie marked his return to former club Carrick Rangers for the first time since his departure from the Amber Army last year with an emphatic 1-4 win with east Belfast outfit Dundela in the County Antrim Shield, while in the Mid Ulster Cup second-tier league leaders Loughgall saw Glenavon off for the second time in a week in a nine-goal thriller at Mourneview Park.
These are upsets on paper – as any defeat of a top-tier team by a lower-league opponent would be – but in reality it is more indicative of a healthily competitive second-division, to the point where it blurs the line in quality between their high-flyers and the Premiership’s bottom-six.
Dundela’s win at Taylor’s Avenue is not the first cup-set the green-shirted side have enjoyed this season. In the League Cup first round, they welcomed Crusaders to Wilgar Park and left them headed home bruising after securing a 2-1 win for their home faithful to celebrate.
The second round was to end disappointingly for Currie and his team, but only after giving a hard-fought account against Linfield. It took a solitary Robbie McDaid strike off the bench for the Irish League champions to secure their last-eight spot – hence you could always be assured the Duns would fight tooth and nail on their trip to east Antrim.
An unwelcome recent trend of defensive leakiness for Stuart King’s Rangers was extended to 18 goals conceded in four matches after Tuesday night. Dundela were widely praised for their display and now they have a last-four showdown with Larne at Wilgar awaiting them.
The Inver Reds averted defeat as Albert Watson’s 70th-minute strike assured the current top-flight leaders of their semi-final spot, seeing off Ballymena United 1-0 at home in their pursuit of a third successive County Antrim Shield success.
But they will draw on their elimination from the League Cup to know not to under-estimate their lower-tier adversaries.
They visited the BMG Arena to take on Portadown side Annagh United, and despite taking the lead fell to a 2-1 defeat thanks to a last-minute Conor Mullen winner for the team from the Tandragee Road.
In their belated (due to Covid) first season as a second-tier side since achieving promotion from the Premier Intermediate League, Annagh upset the odds to finish 2nd-place and qualify for the promotion play-off. While they fell short over two legs, tasting one-goal margins to defeat home and away to near-neighbours Portadown, they have not rested on their laurels and sit 2nd-place in the Championship once again with seven wins in their first nine matches.
Topping the table – and indeed a draw with Annagh is the only reason why they are not on a maximum 27 points out of 27 – is Loughgall.
A team 15 years removed from their last Premiership stint, and population-wise the smallest settlement in the history of UK football to play in the top-flight as they hail from a village of around 300 people, the aptly-nicknamed Villagers have thrived in recent times and are fancying their chances of an awaited return that not-so-distant history indicates they would deserve.
They played Glenavon twice in a week and beat them away from home on both occasions. Most recently, they sealed a topsy-turvy 5-4 win over the Lurgan Blues to set up a Mid Ulster Cup semi-final tie with Newry City.
City themselves have looked assured performance-wise since making their return to the Premiership this season, and have kept a stable footing throughout the decade-long tutelage of manager Darren Mullen. While some good fortune swung their way due to Glentoran’s retrospective expulsion from the 2021/22 Irish Cup after the Joe Crowe eligibility saga, they can still say they were semi-finalists of Ireland’s oldest football cup competition as a second-tier side.
Lest we forget they defeated arch-rivals Warrenpoint Town in the Mourne Ultimatum in the tournament’s fifth round, and would later replace them in the Premiership as the border clubs swapped places for this season. It is not a total digression as it serves to reinforce the point.
Back to Loughgall, though. Inspired by the brilliant form of Lithuanian ex-Coleraine starlet Nedas Mačiulaitis – who has just been named Championship Player of the Month – they are flying high in top-spot after successive 3rd-place finishes in 2020 and 2022 (the 2020/21 term was not played below the Premiership as the pandemic raged on).
In the League Cup last-16, they emulated local rivals Annagh – with Newry also still in the hat – in their defeat of the Mourneview Aces. Dean Smith’s side emerged 2-1 winners with goals by Pablo Andrade and Mark Patton.
You can also look at other near-misses. It took Ballymena United extra-time to see Ards off 2-4 in the League Cup, while Newry were given somewhat of a scare in the same competition by Stephen Small’s Ballyclare Comrades en route to securing a 1-2 win at Dixon Park.
Even – and this is a digression – third-tier sides Bangor (vs Cliftonville), Lisburn Distillery (vs Glentoran), Limavady United (vs Newry City) and Armagh City (vs Newry City… they just live for cups, don’t they!) came close to giving top-tier opponents a rude awakening this campaign.
The salient point is that Championship clubs, particularly those at the top end such as Loughgall, Annagh – who, in the interest of balance, also let in five at home to relegation-threatened Dungannon Swifts this mid-week – and Dundela, have what it takes to make an impression in the Premiership in their current trajectories.
If their displays in the cups are any barometer, and indeed you can take into account that elite top-tier sides often use the cups to rotate their teams, if they were to achieve promotion and follow a case study of a Newry ilk this season, could they compete and realistically do enough to survive in the top-tier?
It’s a hypothetical and somewhat rhetorical question, but you would hardly rule them out. Currie is a well-respected former Premiership boss who kept Carrick and Ards up in their first seasons back in the top-tier, while Ciaran McGurgan’s Annagh are as well-drilled and energetic a unit as any for the level they are at. Smith’s Loughgall have been thereabouts by the second-tier summit for the past few years and will have had time to strategise.
Warrenpoint are picking up steam but their first few outings back at this level implied an immediate bounce-back for Barry Gray’s troops is no given.
The Championship is as intense as it has ever been these days. To win it is a mammoth task and we are perhaps beyond the age where we should label a promoted side the automatic favourite to go down. For it to be like this is undoubtedly valuable for the pyramid as a whole, and long may it stay that way.
Featured image from Portadown F.C. official website.
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