By Jonathan Brown
Ballynahinch Olympic Ladies are enjoying a terrific start to the season, sitting top of the NIWFA Division Three table with an unbeaten record in both league and cup. Olympic continued their impressive run of form with a convincing 4-1 win over Portadown Ladies on Monday night.
The team is coached by former Olympic players Aidan Walsh and Anthony Russell. Aidan started out as a youth player with Olympic before playing for Ballynahinch United, Drumaness, and Dromara, eventually rejoining the club when they were in Amateur League 2B and helping them achieve several promotions. When an ankle break ended Aidan’s playing career, he helped set up Olympic’s youth girls’ section in 2022 alongside Anthony and fellow coaches Gareth McGreevy and Emma Gordon, before re-forming the ladies’ team later that same year.
“A parent of one of the players from one of the youth girls’ teams said, ‘why don’t we get a ladies’ football team going,’” Aidan recalled. “We were just thinking we’d do it for a bit of craic over the winter, but we ended up getting really good numbers. We had a group of 20-odd girls at the time and we just decided we’d have a crack at it.”
Olympic joined the Northern Ireland Women’s Football Association (NIWFA) in 2023, starting out in Division 6 and following in the footsteps of the original Olympic ladies’ team, which was formed in 2008 before disbanding. “We had a strong side when we joined the league in 2023, and starting in the bottom division, we knew we were going to do well. But we knew there were teams from the Championship that had dropped down, so we were stuck in a division with a new-look Bloomfield team and we ended up coming second to them. We got to the Division 6 cup final against them and lost.”
After gaining promotion from Division 6 in their first season, the Olympic ladies have continued to rise through the leagues and now find themselves in NIWFA Division Three. Ballynahinch native Aidan isn’t underestimating the challenge of Division Three, despite his team sitting top of the table. “It’s a really tough division. Any team can beat any team on their day, so you have to show up and give it 100 per cent. The teams that came up with us from last season—Antrim and Raceview—were the big two last year that nobody could get close to in Division Four. Now Raceview are sitting mid-table and Antrim are down in mid-table as well. It just shows you that no matter how good a team you are, with teams constantly moving down from the division above and teams moving up, it’s just a really tight division that we’re in.”
The result at home to Portadown means the Ballynahinch side has recorded five wins from their opening seven league games, while picking up draws against Raceview Ladies and Antrim Ladies. “The girls have been playing fantastically. We’ve had two draws—away to Raceview, a team that came up last year, and against Antrim. Away to Raceview, we didn’t really show up in that game up at Ballymena, but it is what it is—we got a good point out of it. And against Antrim, that was a fair enough draw at home, and I know they’ve freshened up their squad as well.”
It’s now three wins from three following the Portadown result, with Katie O’Prey, Niamh Murray, Cari Boyle, and captain Courtney Anderson all netting for Olympic on Monday night. The manager was delighted with the performance. “Our defence was on top form, keeping it nice and tight at the back and keeping the Portadown chances to a minimum. We played out well from the back, the midfield used full backs very well to reset our attacks, and we played neat one-twos around the pitch, picking the threaded pass at the correct times. On top of that, the heart and will to win was amazing.”
Aidan added, “I felt we dominated the first half and deserved our 2-0 lead at half-time. After the restart, we made five changes and produced a commanding second-half display, adding another two goals. All 16 girls that played did superbly well in terrible conditions.”
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing this year, with player availability issues impacting the start of the season. “Pregnancies affected one or two girls just before the season started and we had a couple of injuries as well. Exams were a big one this year too—we missed a load of girls at the start of the season because of A-Levels, GCSE, and university exams. We’ve signed around ten new players because we needed to, otherwise we wouldn’t have had a team. But all the girls are starting to filter back now and we’re sitting at a squad of 22–23 ladies all fighting to get in the starting 11,” Aidan said.
With a healthy squad now at his disposal and a strong girls’ youth setup to fall back on, the Ballynahinch man wants his team to continue their rise up the NIWFA pyramid. “Our aim is to keep winning promotions. We have a good group of youth players coming through and we’ll be filtering the ones that are good enough to play senior football into the team next year. But the goal is to just keep getting promoted and see how far we can go.”
Olympic’s girls’ youth section is set to be the foundation for the future success of the senior ladies’ team. The club now has four girls’ teams from U12 to U18 level, with over 90 female players registered. Aidan described the growth of girls’ football in Ballynahinch and the surrounding areas over the past few years as “incredible.”
“Since we started our youth section, the amount of girls that have joined the club is incredible, and I think we had over 100 girls at one point. There’s been so many hidden gems amongst those young players too—girls that had never actually played football before, that had come from Gaelic, rugby, or hockey and wanted to try it out. The amount of girls, even in surrounding areas like Drumaness, who want to play football now is insane. I think it can only be a good thing.”
The Olympic Ladies’ next test comes against title rivals Belfast Swifts Ladies at home on Monday, 16 June.
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