The festive football season in Northern Ireland always brings its own fruits, and with a trophy on the line on the morning before Christmas, one of Bangor or Dunmurry Rec knew they would be in for a sweet holiday period while souring the other side’s in the process. The Seasiders were considered the heavy pre-match favourites over their Amateur League adversaries, but while no shock was to be on the cards, by no means was it a formality.
An action-packed second half where emotions tossed and turned proved decisive. The Rec threatened an upset on breaking the deadlock just a few minutes after the interval, taking the game to their Irish League opponents with a spring in their step, but the Yellows were resilient to recover when more spaces emerged and made good on two chances that turned the deficit totally around.
Tension filled the air on Christmas Eve morning. A flood of varied emotions that built up all week now came to a head.
A Yuletide cup final. There’s not much more that really needs to be said. Make or break if you want to feel upbeat and still immerse in the treats of the season.
A vital boost in momentum for clubs in the respective plights of Bangor and Dunmurry Rec if they could seize the day, too. A promotion push to the Championship the Seasiders are primarily fighting for; pulling away from the Division 1A drop the intention of the Rec.
These are days you live for as a supporter. Your delight is at the expense of a despondent other. You just know you want to be on the right side.
The weather at least remained pleasant. Mild, dry conditions, a real mark of change from recent frosty chills that have wreaked havoc on fixture schedules across the British Isles over the past fortnight.
Lee Feeney’s troops had trained with an added excitement in anticipation with this would-be date with destiny in the week.
An occasion which the 44-year-old Clandeboye chief had been on the wrong end of 28 years to the day prior, the Kilkeel hero’s keenness to definitively banish any lingering ghosts of Christmas past and fulfil a stated aim from when he was first appointed in June 2020 was unsurprisingly reflected in a full-strength team selection.
James Taylor returned between the sticks in place of Marc Orbinson, who had started last week’s ultimately abandoned date with Banbridge Town seven days previously. The former Glenavon shot-stopper’s reinstatement accounted for one of three alterations from that home bout, with Jamie Glover and Michael Halliday restored in the respective places of Scott McArthur and Jordan Hughes who were named as two of five substitutes.
Ben Arthurs, who was named to the matchday squad for the first time since mid-November against the Town last week, was also on the bench here. As fellow outfielders Gareth Beattie and Karl Devine – who, like Feeney, know what it is like to lose here – completed the reserve panel, the reduced list of options that comes with this competition meant the boss had attack at heart.
An appearance at Seaview would have been Arthurs’ first since the Steel quarter-final win at Albert Foundry six weeks ago, having had to nurse an ankle injury in the interluding time.
Dan Thornton’s Dunmurry Rec outfit set their stall to be tight in defence and break when the time was right.
The team based to Belfast’s southwest went in well aware that victory would represent a legendary upset, perhaps the greatest in the competition’s 127-year history. That would not dampen their determination, though.
Pre-match formalities took place as Richard White – the man in the middle for three of Bangor’s last six matches, inclusive of this final and the club’s semi-final success over Ballymacash Rangers – led the teams out and lined them up to exchange pleasantries, with the Seasiders contingent availing of the chance to bring their children and younger relatives out to experience the day.
He then signalled for play to start. At 10:47am, Dunmurry’s Andrew Carberry set things rolling. It was, however, to be their rivals from the east coast who set about creating the bulk of the early chances.
That last-four showdown was won by a solitary wonderstrike by Glover, and the 21-year-old drew an alert near-post stop from Rec goalkeeper Matthew McClurg. He was set down the left-hand channel in this battle’s first opportunity on seven minutes, receiving in stride and shaping with intent, but he could not mark it with his seventh goal of the season.
Barely 60 seconds later, the North Down men came even closer. A neat piece of passing interplay in the final third saw the ball arrive at Reece Neale’s feet, and the Ballynahinch ace – contesting his third Steel decider – squared across the box from left to right.
His delivery found opposite wingback Seanna Foster, and the Cliftonville loanee took the former Linfield Swifts skipper’s supply nicely before striking a venomous drive off the top of the bar at Seaview’s railway end.
It was on the half-hour before the game’s next clear-cut chance would arrive, courtesy much in part to the defensive solidity Thornton had beforehand pledged that his boys would show.
A cross-field pass by David Hume was put perfectly onto Michael Halliday’s head, with the east Belfast icon hot in pursuit of a Steel winners’ parade with a third different team cushioning his flick-on into Adam Neale’s path. A man who lives and breathes goals, it wasn’t quite to be here as his first-time shot from six yards was parried away by McClurg.
It was then through good fortune that the shot-stopper wasn’t beaten by his own man on 38 minutes, when defender Scott Thornton directed the elder Neale sibling’s header barely wide of his own bottom left post.
The rest of the 2nd-placed side in the Premier Intermediate League’s goal-bound looks were half-chances at best up to the interval.
White sounded his whistle for half time following two added minutes, as Foster conjured up a cross that Adam – who entered eyeing up a 2022 treble of the Amateur League, Steel and Intermediate Cups – could not guide on target.
The defensive resolve of those wearing white and blue stripes was asking questions of their counterparts in blue and yellow.
That said, it never looked like Feeney was flustered. At one point, he took in a long glance at a main stand packed to the rafters behind him, a smile starting to broaden, and it felt like the tools were there for his troops to come out firing.
He called regularly on his team to up the tempo, braced for a match-up where they always seemed primed to have a majority of possession. It has tended to be this term that Bangor have found an answer even when the going gets tough, be it through tweaks in tactics or impacts of the subs, and Feeney – on the losing end of the 1994 final against, of all teams, Bangor Reserves – opted for both.
Hughes replaced Glover, who was on a yellow card, at half time. Yet it would have to be from behind for the true impact to show.
Palpably, hearts were in mouths when Ryan Arthur’s loose backpass was picked up by Carberry just three minutes into the second period. The centre back – a winner of the prestigious tournament with hometown club Carrick Rangers, claiming the prize as a 19-year-old with the Amber Army in 2014 – sought to return the ball to Taylor to start again from defence but it was undercooked, and to the horror of most of a 2,714-strong crowd, it was slotted between the goalkeeper’s legs and low into the net.
The Rec had drawn first blood with their first clear-cut chance. Carberry wheeled towards a jubilant and jumping away end now knowing there was a lead to defend. His clever side-footed strike was a well-placed attempt in a pressure situation, and following on from this mix-up, the Seagulls knew they could not dither in dishing up an answer.
Dunmurry seemed to push up the pitch more and chip more bodies into attack afterwards as the confidence flowed. A deflected effort from a lively Hughes on 51 minutes was the first semblance of a response, yet in the final half-hour with the pitch more open, Bangor shifted through the gears and found their leveller.
Not since seeing Foundry off on the 12th November had the faithful seen Arthurs in action in their colours. Subbed on with 58 minutes gone, any doubts whether the sharp-shooter still had any rust hanging off him were no sooner put to bed.
Five minutes later, the Kircubbin favourite was to be the difference-maker. He so often is, but this felt extraordinary.
Taking Lewis Harrison’s incisive supply with a killer first touch, it set him perfectly to slot low into the bottom right with his second.
Halliday, so renowned as a player for the big moments, was on this occasion to find his 24-year-old replacement take it by the scruff. His 12th, and surely biggest, goal of the season. His 87th in total.
Pride of the village? More like pride of the whole peninsula.
The Rec’s resolve, broken. And the pressure was not to let up, as all three strikers on the pitch intertwined on 65 minutes to almost add the second.
Arthurs held it up, Hughes crossed across the goal-face from the inside-left and Neale was just out of reach in the centre. It felt like Bangor had stolen a march. It felt like the formula had finally come together.
And then on 70 minutes, Neale got what he had been looking for. The pre-match favourites turned it back in their favour.
Tidy midfield maestro Dylan O’Kane has magicked up an enticing array of set-piece deliveries in recent weeks. Again he was opted as the Yellows’ primary corner-taker for this day of all days, but a cross from open play this time was to send the stands into raptures.
A short throw from Foster found former Ards man O’Kane in an ocean of space, sending a super ball straight towards the opposite back stick. When a fella who found the net no fewer than 40 times last season gets a clean, fairly uncontested connection in the box, the odds are always going to be stacked in the line-leader’s favour. Neale’s laser-guided header was placed assuredly into the bottom right, his 14th since joining three months ago.
What followed in the final 10 minutes was a flurry. But more a flurry in pursuit of a third Bangor goal than a Dunmurry equaliser.
On 83 minutes, Adam Neale, earlier dormant but by now actively erupting, was adjudged to have fouled McClurg when he contested a close-range header that the goalkeeper was not able to hold. Shortly after, the explosive Arthurs had his low drive from a Hughes lay-off turned away by the stopper, before one-time third-tier Player of the Year Hughes had a low attempt from just outside the area fall narrowly the wrong side of the right-hand post.
The splurge didn’t stop there. Foster’s whipped centre on 86 minutes, supplied early and enticingly from the right, fell perfectly to Arthurs by the left-hand post, and ‘Big Ben’ was unlucky to see his driven effort deflected barely wide by an excellent piece of recovery defending from Thornton. The 24-year-old striker – closing in on a century of goals for the Seasiders – turned provider himself with 88 minutes gone, but Adam Neale headed over.
Reece came even closer than his older brother. Hume, who was officially named the Man of the Match, recycled from a right-sided flag-kick and found the 2016 Steel and Sons winner, yet just as Foster opposite him had struck the upright at the start of the fixture, the same agonising metric denied the tireless vice-captain as his placed attempt struck the interior of the right post before bouncing away from the goalline.
There was still late drama. The break-out of an added-time altercation resulted in a red card being brandished to Dunmurry Rec’s Rory Courtney, with the fullback shown his marching orders while 80th-minute midfield entry Devine had yellow gifted to him by White.
That was to be the game’s last major action, as after three additional minutes, the referee signalled for the match’s end.
A brave battle by a spirited Rec outfit, who went in on the back of upset after upset throughout their journey to the decider, but Bangor had done enough to add a fourth iteration of this trophy for the senior side and a seventh edition in total to the cabinet.
It was Morrow and Verner in 2004. Scates and McLaughlin in 2011. You can add Arthurs and Neale to that list in 2022.
Concluding 2-1, it was the exact same scoreline as it was 11 years ago when the Clandeboye clan last took top honours.
Thoughts turned to the late Frankie Wilson, a much-admired personality on the seaside and a man Feeney paid extensive tribute to beforehand. An honour it would be, as he described it, to be on the same list as Wilson, as a Steel and Sons Cup winner helming the Seagulls. And now, almost 30 years on from having his heart broken, Lee stands on the shoulders of giants, immortalised in the institution’s history.
As are all the players. Harrison, left despondent in 2017 after his Linfield Swifts were beaten by Newington, held aloft a long-sought honour in 2022.
“When Ben scored, I knew that we’d push on, I knew we had it in us to go on and get the winner”
Lewis Harrison
In the know on what exactly it is like to feel sour-faced after a Steel defeat at the age of 18, his desire to atone for that 1-0 reverse as a 23-year-old and one of the first names on his manager’s line-up could never be questioned.
He admitted in his post-match reflection that there were some thoughts back to that year’s decider – when Padraig Scollay bagged an 82nd-minute winner for the ‘Ton, who have since gone on to achieve Championship promotion – after Carberry converted for the opponents.
“When we went 1-0 down, I started to think ‘oh no, it’s happening again’, but when we scored the equaliser, I never really felt like the result was in doubt from there on,” the captain explained.
“When Ben scored, I knew that we’d push on, I knew we had it in us to go on and get the winner. The boys were brilliant, coming through to get the result.”
Emulating former teammate at the Blues Swifts Reece Neale as a Steel-winning skipper, he felt a strong final 30 minutes proved decisive.
“To be fair, I actually wasn’t too happy with my own performance, I felt I was a wee bit leggy,” the former Lisburn Distillery and Harland and Wolff Welders midfielder rather frankly added.
“But towards the end, the last half-hour we dominated like, I think we deserved the win.
“It puts a dampener on the whole thing when you lose, you’ve lost the previous day and you can’t really get yourself up for Christmas, so we’re all in for a happy enough Christmas and New Year now.”
As recently as last November, given the devastating nature of a 5-3 extra-time elimination at the hands of that same green-shirted north Belfast side in last year’s semi-finals, it felt satisfyingly apt to set the record straight at the earliest possible opportunity.
This trophy is one part of the season’s journey. A good go at an Irish Cup adventure awaits, while winning the league remains the key priority.
But there is a lot of positive energy that comes with going all the way in a festive decider.
“The Steel and Intermediate, get those, get the league and push on from there”
Adam Neale on Bangor’s season objectives following the 2-0 win over PSNI in the Premier Intermediate League in October
It can act as further motivation that can spur you on and aid you in fulfilling other campaign intentions. Not mentioning that it is a major piece of silverware you can attribute yourself to claiming victory in. Those sorts of things stay with you throughout your life. Time doesn’t erode that.
What’s more, this was the last outing of an eventful 2022 for Bangor, and what a high note to end on. No sense of longing over what might have been. Full sense of living in those special moments.
All involved at the club are fully entitled to enjoy a well-earned break from action, with another nine days from the Steel success until the next game. A trip to face Distillery at New Grosvenor on the 2nd January 2023 in what will be the ninth Premier Intermediate matchday of the Seasiders’ season.
It is effectively halfway through the term as a whole, and there is little to grumble about with the strong form shown. In the 22nd competitive match, that was the 18th win to be booked.
That next battle against the Whites, who Bangor inflicted a 5-0 defeat on back in August, will call for more of the same mental fortitude and bottle. It was shown on Saturday but it has not been isolated.
In the meantime, have a very merry festive period, and then it’s back at it again!
Featured image from myself.
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