nifootball.co.uk

NORTHERN Ireland’s leading grassroots football website nifootball.co.uk will celebrate its third anniversary this January and it promises to be here for many years to come.

Encompassing all the main leagues throughout the country, from youth football and the women’s game right up to the country’s top flight, the JJB Sports Premiership, the site has been a runaway success and is an essential reference point for anyone involved in ‘the beautiful game’.

The website is the brainchild of Scott Boyde, whose passion for his own club then Newtownbreda FC - saw him launch the club onto the World Wide Web. But hamstrung by a chronic lack of up-to-date statistics, most particularly, fixtures, results and league tables, Boyde set about establishing a comprehensive reference point for not only the Amateur League - his club’s own league - but all the leagues and divisions scattered across the four corners of the country.

Nowadays, nifootball.co.uk offers unrivalled in-depth news, scores, results and tables across an impressive array of football leagues in Northern Ireland. And the establishment of a user’s forum has proved perhaps the most exciting addition to the website, with thousands of players and fans alike, logging on to have their say on the weekend’s shenanigans.

Boyde said: “I have worked for many years in IT and with a bit of spare time on my side, I decided to put my team then Newtownbreda FC on the web. I created a basic site that had some statistics on players, some background info on the team, but mainly the information on the divisions the first and second teams competed in within the Amateur league.”

“As the season progressed, I saw that there was a lack of up to date information on the whole league or if there was anything no one was aware that it existed.”

“Through the IFA I was able to get contact details for some other leagues including, the two Ballymena leagues, Old Boys, South Antrim. With these new leagues I decided at this time to move the information onto a site of its own and nifootball.co.uk was born.”

The nifootball.co.uk website continues to go from strength to strength, with 58,000 visits to the site in the last month, 14,449 of which were unique, totaling 815,494 page impressions.