The 2005

Setanta Cup The Setanta Sports Cup was a club football competition featuring teams from both football associations on the island of Ireland. Inaugurated in 2005, it was a cross-border competition between clubs in the League of Ireland from the Republic of Ir ...

was the first edition of a club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

competition featuring teams from both football associations on the island of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. It was inaugurated as a cross-border competition between clubs from the

League of Ireland The League of Ireland ( ga, Sraith na hÉireann), together with the Football Association of Ireland, is one of the two main governing bodies responsible for organising association football in the Republic of Ireland. The term was originally us ...

in the

Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...

and the Irish League in

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. The cup is sponsored by

Setanta Sports Setanta Sports is a sports television company based in Dublin, Ireland broadcasting throughout select Eurasian. The company was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to international audiences. The company previo ...

; the

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

sports

television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...

. The competition was launched with Setanta providing support for prize money (

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...

350,000) and sponsorship (€1.6 million over 4 years). For this season the cup was simply known as the Setanta Cup before being renamed the Setanta Sports Cup from 2006 onwards.

Glentoran Glentoran Football Club is a professional football club that plays in the NIFL Premiership. The club was founded in 1882. History Early history In 1914, Glentoran won the Vienna Cup, becoming the first United Kingdom team to win a European t ...

beat

Longford Town Longford () is the county town of County Longford in Ireland. It has a population of 10,008 according to the 2016 census. It is the biggest town in the county and about one third of the county's population lives there. Longford lies at the meet ...

2–1 in the first ever game of the competition on 15 March 2005. The first final saw

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

side Linfield defeat

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

's Shelbourne 2–0 at

Tolka Park Tolka Park ( ga, Páirc na Tulchann) is an Irish football ground located in the north Dublin suburb of Drumcondra, on the northern banks of the River Tolka. It is currently the home ground of League of Ireland club Shelbourne. The stadium fo ...

in Dublin on 21 May 2005 to collect the winner's prize of

150,000.

Format

The teams would be split into two groups of 3 teams and play each other twice, once at home and once away. The winners of each group would play in a single game final, to be held in Tolka Park if at least one team from the Republic of Ireland was involved. If the final was played between two teams from Northern Ireland, the final would be held at

Windsor Park Windsor Park is a football stadium in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is the home ground of Linfield F.C. who own the land the stadium is built on, while the Irish Football Association own and operate the stadium and pay Linfield an annual rent ...

Qualification

League of Ireland

Shelbourne qualified by winning the

2004 League of Ireland Premier Division The 2004 League of Ireland Premier Division was the 20th season of the League of Ireland Premier Division. The division was made up of 10 teams. Shelbourne were champions while Cork City finished as runners-up. Both clubs also enjoyed respectable ...

title. Longford Town qualified by winning the 2004 FAI Cup Final.

Cork City Cork ( , from , meaning 'marsh') is the second largest city in Ireland and third largest city by population on the island of Ireland. It is located in the south-west of Ireland, in the province of Munster. Following an extension to the city' ...

took the third spot by finishing second in the 2004 League of Ireland Premier Division.

Irish League

Linfield qualified by winning the 2003–04 Irish Premier League. Glentoran qualified by winning the 2003–04

Irish Cup The Irish Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly referred to as the Irish Cup (currently known as the Samuel Gelston's Whiskey Irish Cup for sponsorship purposes) is the primary football knock-out cup competition in Northern Ireland. Ina ...

. The third spot went to

Portadown Portadown () is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population of a ...

for finishing second in the 2003–04 Irish Premier League. Following a draw (in which league winners were kept apart), the teams were placed as follows; *Group 1; Linfield, Longford Town, Glentoran *Group 2; Shelbourne, Portadown, Cork City

Group stage

Group 1

---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Group 2

---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Final

Goalscorers

;3 goals * Gary Hamilton (Portadown) ;2 goals * Richie Baker (Shelbourne) * Jason Byrne (Shelbourne) *

Glenn Ferguson Glenn Ferguson (born 10 July 1969) is a Northern Irish former football player and manager. Ferguson amassed over 1,000 domestic appearances in a career where he played for Ards, Glenavon, Linfield and Lisburn Distillery, and scored a tota ...

(Linfield) *

Michael Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descrip ...

(Glentoran) *

Paul McAreavey Paul McAreavey (born 3 December 1980) is a Northern Irish football manager and former player. He previously played for Swindon Town, Linfield, Dundalk, Ballymena United and Donegal Celtic. In May 2006 the Belfast native signed a three-year fu ...

(Linfield) * Stephen Paisley (Longford Town) * Peter Thompson (Linfield) ;1 goal * Denis Behan (Cork City) * Wesley Boyle (Portadown) *

Kevin Doyle Kevin Edward Doyle (born 18 September 1983) is an Irish former professional footballer who played as a forward. He played for Wexford F.C. (formerly Wexford Youths), St Patrick's Athletic, and Cork City in his homeland before he moved to Eng ...

(Cork City) * Jamie Harris (Shelbourne) *

Shaun Holmes Shaun Holmes (born 27 December 1980 in Derry, Northern Ireland) is a Northern Irish footballer. Career He had previously played for Derry City in the League of Ireland but was released by the club on 14 December 2006, as he was not seen as b ...

(Glentoran) * Paul Keegan (Longford Town) *

Darren Kelly Darren Kelly (born 30 June 1979) is a Northern Irish professional Manager (association football), football manager and former Football player, player who played as a centre-back. He is the sporting director of club Newport County A.F.C., Newpor ...

(Portadown) * Stuart King (Linfield) * Davy Larmour (Linfield) * Darren Lockhart (Glentoran) * Gavin Melaugh (Glentoran) * Tim Mouncey (Linfield) * William Murphy (Linfield) * Andy Myler (Longford Town) * Stephen Parkhouse (Glentoran) ;1 own goal * Philip Simpson (Glentoran)

References

External links

Official Setanta Cup Site
{{Setanta Sports Cup Seasons

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

Set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...