Belfast Celtic Football Club is an intermediate,

Northern Irish Northern Irish people is a demonym for all people born in Northern Ireland or people who are entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence. Most Northern Irish people either identify as Northern ...

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 ...

club playing in the

Ballymena & Provincial Intermediate League The Ballymena and Provincial Football League is a regional football league in Northern Ireland. The league has a Premier Division with intermediate status and three junior divisions: Junior Divisions 1, 2 and 3. History The league was formed a ...

. The club hails from

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 ...

and plays its home games at Páirc Na gCeiltigh (Glen Road Heights), which is in the west of the city. It was founded as Sport & Leisure Swifts in 1978, although the clubs views it's rebranding in 2019 as the beginning of a

new club The New Club is a private social club in the New Town area of Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded in 1787, it is Scotland's oldest club. The club occupied premises on St Andrew Square from 1809 until 1837, when it moved to purpose-built rooms on ...

, when it was rebranded as Belfast Celtic. The club played in the County Down Premier League and the Dunmurry League, before joining the Northern Amateur League in 1990. The club in 2019 changed its name to Belfast Celtic. The club joined the IFA Championship (later the NIFL Premier Intermediate League) in 2009. It shared Larne's Inver Park ground while its own home at Glen Road was improved to Championship standard. In 2019, the club was relegated from the Northern Ireland Football League and joined the Ballymena & Provincial Intermediate League. This coincided with a name change to Belfast Celtic.

History

Sport & Leisure F.C. was founded in 1978 when a group of players approached a local Belfast businessman to provide a kit for their new team and he agreed, with the proviso that his company name, Ulster Sport & Leisure Club, appeared on the shirts. The club adopted the name "Sport & Leisure", which remained until 2019, despite the disappearance of the original business much earlier. The name "Swifts" was added when a number of players from Dunmurry League side Belfast Swifts F.C. left to join Sport & Leisure."Swiftly Does It", ''NI Football'', page 38, Issue 16, Winter 2010; Irish Football Association Admittance to the Amateur League was dependent the club having its own pitch, and this was achieved in 1990, when they secured a pitch at

Allen Park Allen Park is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 28,638. Ford Motor Company is an integral part of the community. Many of the company's offices and facilities lie within the city limit ...

, Antrim. The club acquired the use of Larkfield High School's ground in Belfast in 1991, before opening its own ground at Glen Road Heights in 2001. In 2003, intermediate status was achieved. In 2019, Sport & Leisure Swifts announced plans to revive the name of the historic

Belfast Celtic Belfast Celtic Football Club was a football club. Founded in 1891 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, it was one of the most successful teams in Ireland until it withdrew permanently from the Irish League in 1949. The club left the league for polit ...

club, based in the same area. IFA permission was granted for the name change in advance of the 2019–20 season.

Honours

Intermediate honours

2007–08 NAFL Division 1B Champions *

Border Cup The Border Cup was an association football cup competition for clubs in the Scottish Borders. The competition was founded in 1890 and was last competed for in the 1955–56 season. Format The competition was a knock-out tournament contested by th ...

: 1 **2008–09

External links

Official Club Website

References

Association football clubs in Northern Ireland Association football clubs established in 1978 Association football clubs in Belfast 1978 establishments in Northern Ireland Sport & Leisure Swifts F.C. NIFL Premier Intermediate League clubs {{NorthernIreland-footyclub-stub