Happy New Year! Welcome to 2004.
Portadown FC are currently the absolute toast of Northern Irish football. We’re leading the league with five matches in hand and have already stashed up the Charity Shield and League Cup in our trophy cabinet.
Our team’s successes have catapulted me to the top of the domestic manager reputation charts and above the likes of Big Sam, Curbs and Stevie McC on the world stage.
Our forays into Europe have been a cash cow for us and though we’ve been eliminated for this season, we’re sitting on a £5M bank account which I’m HOPING to splash on a few more signings before we clinch European football for next season and revert to the mandated Dutch-only signings.
Our first fixture of the calendar year takes us up to the capital to face Cliftonville. It’s top vs bottom. We were past their league total of 14 points by our sixth match of the season.
We escape with the three points, though we fought tooth and nail for it. Our strike force doing what our strike force does. Unfortunately, we lose Ceesay for three weeks with a twisted ankle so hopefully some of our youngsters can step up in the upcoming weeks.
I bring in a new assman to help me out who’s a bit of an upgrade from our former fella… But then the former assman seems happy to join as a coach, so I extend that olive branch. We’ll see what he says.
Our next league match is at home against Glentoran. I’m not sure why I’ve not noticed before, but they’ve got double Tim McCanns on either wing: a 23 year old version and a 32 year old version. And they’re both relatively decent.
Another win and again by the slimmest of margins. Hose nets the only goal of the match as we finally take sole possession of top spot in the table.
The youth academy has churned out another decent player and it’s another keeper. He’s good enough to warrant a contract offer and is listed for loan.
It’s been a while, but it’s time for a TOTTC! Linfield are three points (and four matches) back so a win at home would be most welcome.
Are one-goal wins just the way things go this year? We didn’t really deserve this one but it’s better than the alternative, I suppose. Brewerton with a rare MotM award for his 4/4 tackles and 6/7 headers.
We travel to Ards for our next league match. My scout says that they’ve got a tough defensive backbone that’ll be hard to break down. Let’s try to do it anyway.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with my scout’s opinion on Ards’ defensive capabilities.
We bring in another solid player in Robbie Raeside from Alloa. He costs us £80k and should be an improvement at CB over both McAulay and Challinor.
To be fair to McAulay, he did score a brace last time out against Ards, so he keeps his spot for our next match. It’s Irish Cup 5th Round time and Newry are in town.
We control the match in it’s entirety and a goal each half is enough to see us through to next round. Clarke doing a great job as MotM filling in for injured Ceesay.
We’ve drawn amateur side Kilmore Rec who are SO amateur they even spelled their club name incorrectly on the Irish Cup entrance form. They’ve got no real players, but still knocked off Premier League relegation fodder Cliftonville 3–0 in the 5th Round.
Back to league action and we can use this match as a measuring stick for our match against our future Cup opponents… Home against Cliftonville. Raeside makes his debut for Brewerton who had an off game last time out.
Based on the result of this one, we should be okay to face the amateur side. We’ve lost de Weerdt for ten days/three matches with a bruised shin (poor ickle baby) but Nijkamp comes on and scores a goal to compliment Hose’s brace. We’re now safe from both relegation and the relegation playoff…with fourteen matches go to.
We’re at home again for our next fixture as Ards come to town. We have a 9–1–0 record against them in our ten meetings. Long may that form continue.
We dominate for a first half, holding Ards to no shots at all while scoring three of our eight shots. Not sure what happened at the break but we don’t manage another shot while Ards carry most of the play. Our 86% tackling rate helps us not concede and the the score remains 3–0 at the final whistle. We’ve now officially clinched a top-6 spot for the season.
That top-4 spot countdown is key, because I’m still trying to bring on players. We sign this full international on a free as he’d been released from HSV’s amateur side. What I forgot was that since he’s non-EU, he’ll have to be in the lineup 75% of the time to keep his work permit…
…so on to the bench he goes for our next match, a trip to The Oval in Belfast. Glentoran are a bit off their regular pace in 6th so far this season. They’re gonna wanna go on a run but hopefully it doesn’t start against us.
Glentoran does NOT start a run against us. At least not a positive one. We up our tackle rate to 92% for this one and permit a solitary shot from the hosts. Meanwhile we take twelve, hit the target with eight and beat the keeper with three. We lose Brewerton for ten days to injury, but Raeside’s arrival has given us more options at the back.
We’v got the (relatively) long trip up to Derry to face Institute again next. Didn’t we end last month with a match up there too?
Good news, bad news in this match. It’s a third successive 3–0 win and we remain perfect on the season. But, we lose our current strike partnership to injury. One for three days and one for three week and you can probably guess which way around it was. Hose is currently the front-runner for Player of the Year and now we’re stripped of him for our next five matches.
Our striker situation is ever-evolving. Nijkamp concusses himself for ten days but de Weerdt is finally back from his injury. But on the bright side, our home match with Glenavon (currently gaffer-less) has been postponed due to bad weather, giving our players a few more recovery days.
I try to get us an extra one but apparently non-league in England is far more exciting than annual European football…
We don’t quite have enough time to get back to full fitness for our regular strikers, so we pair de Weerdt with Kox and have Douglas as an option off the bench. Hose, Nijkamp and Davids are all unavailable. Glentoran visit Shamrock Park having beaten them ten days ago at their place.
Feeney scores early and Pinas doubles our lead before I yank the former off the pitch at the break with a potential injury and a yellow card. Our stalwart back line doesn’t allow a single shot on target AND we avoid any injuries.
Bad weather delays a league match with Armagh, so we skip forward to our Irish Cup 6th Round match. We face Kilmore Rec at some neutral venue as they don’t currently have anywhere to call home. I rotate heavily cus they’re all greyed out.
54 people come and watch as our B-listers annihilate the “hosts”, “Kimore Rec”. We’re up five at the break (including an Antar hat-trick) so I scale back the pressing and tackling to preserve the players a bit.
Our latest (and most likely final) signing of the season might be the best player we’ve ever had (along with Hose?). He’s brought in for a paltry £35k from Wrexham — though he was on loan at Southport at the time.
Back to a full-strength (or even moreso with Gibson’s arrival) side as we get back to league action. Glenavon have hired former player Lee Doherty to guide them. This will be the first MUD he’ll experience as a boss though he’ll obviously know all about it from his playing days.
It’s another 3–0 victory — our fourth in our last five league matches. Antar continues his fantastic start to life in Northern Ireland despite still lacking match practice. No shots for the visitors and a red card to boot.
We’ve officially clinched a top-4 spot now (with nine matches to go) and we’re back to agreeing deals with only Dutch players…if any would join. However, we have already agreed to a few Bosmans (two with compensation fees), though I’m not sure I’ll keep them. And yes, that’s THE Glenn Ferguson of Linfield striker fame. Might send him to our reserves and let him rot.
We travel to due north to Coleraine next and we rotate a bit due to fatigue. There’s an international break coming up soon, so that’ll be a nice breather and we can regroup at that point. But at least Hose is back!
It’s our most competitive match in a LONG while. It’s only the third goal we’ve conceded in thirteen matches this calendar year and one of those was that 8–1 drubbing of Ards. Nieuwenburg’s first league goal of the season the difference between the sides.
A Dutch player has arrived! He’s in from Grimsby (but was on loan at Eindoven) and costs us £180k. His arrival bumps Beevor down to the reserves, though no one is interested in purchasing him.
Everyone is fit and everyone is ready to go for this one. I’m debuting Willems though Mason hasn’t set a foot wrong. Antar is still a sub despite averaging 7.4 exclusively off the bench. We’re just down the road at Armagh, who are currently clinging to 4th place.
We make Armagh’s position a bit more perilous as Coleraine creep up a bit closer to them. We aren’t as dominant as usual but still do enough to win, stay perfect and keep our 13 match win streak alive.
Cliftonville are a win from 8th place but also just a point above 10th. At Shamrock Park, I’m hoping they won’t get that win. We send out the identical side to last match as I want them to gel more with the new faces.
We score five goals from seven shots on target but suffer two injuries. Gibby is gone for three weeks while Mason is gonna be missing for two. The loss drops Cliftonville to 10th place. The win for us means…
…we’re champions! Our third (and most important) trophy of the season. And the fans are well aware of who they need to thank for it.
With six matches to spare, too. Linfield only earning four points in their last four matches sped this coronation along.
The Irish Cup is the last of the things we have a chance to win and a visit from Institute stands in our way of a spot in the semifinals. We’re missing the injured pair but go strong otherwise.
Boom. Through we go. Hose gets his customary goal contribution per match as he now sits on 30 and 13 in 43 matches. I really do like when we score more goals than the other team take shots…
We’ve drawn Ards in the Irish Cup SF stage. It’ll be at a neutral venue but hardly fair. It’s only a 15 minute drive to The Oval in Belfast for Ards and a full 37 minutes for us!
We run out an unchanged XI (and XIV) as Gibson and Mason are still recuperating. We’re at Newry who are comfortably-ish in 3rd place. Ten behind 2nd place Linfield but six ahead of 4th place Armagh.
Kox earns a 10 off the bench after replacing Pinas at the break — a goal for each of them. But it’s Hose and his goal (and 10 rating) that earn him yet another MotM award. Newry’s only shot on target being that penalty that briefly gave them some hope…
The transfer window slams shut at midnight after the match though I’m pretty sure we didn’t need any reinforcements at the deadline. The league title has been ours for two weeks already.
Mason is back from injury and the entire team is at 100% fitness. Gibson takes Ceesay’s spot as he’ll be jetting off to join the Ghanian team for a pair of World Cup qualifiers against Swaziland next week. We’ve got our final MUD match of the season at our place to play.
It’s not been much of a derby lately, has it? Last season we won two, drew one and lost one. This season we’ve won 3–0 three times, 4–0 once and 5–0 once. A de Weerdt brace sandwiched around a Gibson strike settles the result before the halftime whistle and then Hose adds on a late strike to add to his impressive return this season.
Raeside has been our best defender since he arrived but he misses out on the Irish Cup SF due to a twisted knee that he suffered in practice. We’re facing Ards, at neutral site The Oval — Glentoran’s home pitch. The rest remain the same as we look to book another place in a Cup Final…
I’ve got to admit that I was getting a bit worried there for a solid thirty minutes. And then Hose steps up for the umpteenth time. A fifteen minute brace gets us level and then ahead before our Lebanese sub pops up to add one of his own. The stats were pretty even at the break, so our ten men just piled on the pressure in the second half.
Through we go, where we’ll face Coleraine at Windsor Park.
Brewerton’s red and Raeside’s aforementioned injury leaves us with two of our preferred trio in the infirmary. In comes Challinor to face Linfield at the site of our future Irish Cup Final. It’s a TOTTC though we’re already champs and sitting 27 points ahead of them.
Another Hose brace gets us started and though Linfield score on their only shot on target, we score two more after the break to polish off a comprehensive battering. Our strike partners are the only two players in the league with a player rating average over 8.
A 72-hour turnaround for our next match leaves a few tired legs out of the lineup. Antar and Douglas come in to midfield and we go skinny with three AMCs. Armagh visits the Shamrock as they try to cling to 4th place.
We take the lead through Hawkins before Brewerton (a week) and Hawkins (a fortnight) both catch injuries. We end up playing a weird 1–3–3–1–2 formation which results in a third brace in a row for Hose. He’s on fire, having scored in each of our last seven matches.
Our penultimate Premier League match of the season is our final road match as we travel to Ards. They currently sit last, a point behind 9th place (and the relegation play-off spot) Institute, two points back of 8th place (and safety) Glenavon and three behind 7th place Cliftonville. A lot could change at the bottom of the table yet. Our tired legs from last week are no longer weary though we’re now missing all three of our regular central defenders.
Hose does it again. Another brace. His two goals are enough to win the match more us, with Pinas cancelling out Ards lone strike. Fortunately for them, neither Institute nor Glenavon register a victory so the final matchday could still see some movement.
We get Brewerton and Raeside back for our final league match. We’re hosting Institute and we’ve got a chance to a) have an invincible season, b) keep Institute from automatic safety and c) set/improve a bunch of records.
There’s lots and lots of good news with very little bad…if you can even call it that. Is it bad news that Hose didn’t score for the first time in nine matches…while getting a pair of assists and ending with a rating of 10? He began the day level with the 2001–02 version of Glenn Ferguson (Linfield’s fearsome striker and a future Bosman of ours) with a season average of 8.52. Hose has now set the record with a rating of 8.57! Four different players score with de Weerdt getting a 50-minute hat trick before his replacement (Kox) adds our final tally with our last kick of the league season.
Final table, with record totals for points, goals and presumably goal difference. We had two different 7-goal victories this season, with our 8–1 triumph over Ards earning the “Biggest Win” record. We’ve won TWENTY matches a row (obviously a record) and have now gone 41 matches unbeaten. Brutil Hose’s 8.57 and his 15 MotM awards are also Northern Irish League Premier Division records.
One more match to go before the summer break and it’s a chance to clean sweep of the Northern Irish silverware. Coleraine stand in our way as we’re finally back to our best XI/XIV. Windsor Park beckons.
Hose’s back on the score sheet before Willems picks a great time to score his first Portadown goal. In the second half, de Weerdt tacks on a third goal for us and we cruise to the final whistle to cram another trophy into the cabinet.
What a season. Domestically, we lost only one match all season and it was in the second leg of the League Cup semi-final after we won the first leg by four goals and sent out an entirely reserve side. Brugge eliminated us from the Champions Cup, but not before we knocked off Borac and Steaua. We got past Wisla and Le Mans in the UEFA Cup before Chelsea (having lost the first leg at our place) stomped us in the 3rd Round. Our earlier-exit-from-Europe-than-last-year allowed us to add some solid players to the side via transfer and we should be well equipped to head to Europe again next season.
Bring on the summer.
