Ballynahinch Olympic Ladies were presented with the NIWFA Division Three trophy on Monday night after securing the league title last week thanks to a dramatic win over Portadown Ladies.
Olympic celebrated in style as they recorded a resounding 4-0 win over Mid-Ulster Ladies Reserves and were handed the trophy after the final whistle, meaning they’re now just one game away from an unbeaten league campaign. But the title was secured last Wednesday thanks to Beth Donnan’s late free kick, which gave Olympic a 3-2 win and the three points they needed at Pepperton Park.
Anthony Russell manages the team alongside Aidan Walsh and says the achievement was fully deserved. “The girls are delighted and they’ve worked hard all year – they fully deserve it. We’ve got a really good mix – we have our own girls who have grown up playing for us, we have a couple of girls from Lisburn and a couple of girls from Killyleagh, Crossgar direction.
“To go through any league season unbeaten in 13 league games in a really competitive Division Three and to beat teams like Antrim and Raceview, two really good sides that we hadn’t beaten before, having played them countless times over the past three to four years, is brilliant. It just goes to show how far we’ve come.”
Russell helped to set up Olympic’s youth girls’ section a few years ago alongside Aidan Walsh and fellow coaches Gareth McGreevy and Emma Gordon. He also played an integral role in the formation of the ladies’ team that joined the NIWFA pyramid in 2023. For the former Olympic player, it’s always been about sustainable development with the ladies’ team.
“There’ve been promotions every year, which is great and it’s what you want, but you still have to try and continue to make things better. The team that started in the Development League when we started simply wouldn’t be able to cope in Division Two next year. For us it was always a case of, yes, trying to build, but building so things are sustainable for the season after the one you’ve just had,” Russell explained.
The season is far from over yet for Olympic. The team can complete an unbeaten league campaign against Belfast Swifts on Friday, and they face the same team in the Division Three League Cup final on 31 August at Park Way, home of Comber Rec. Russell is keen to guard against complacency ahead of that game.
“We’ve got Belfast Swifts in the cup final, and we play them in the league before that. We played them at home a few weeks ago and beat them 5-0, but it was probably our best performance of the season. The teams are closer than that and Belfast are a really good side with a fantastic female youth set-up.
“On the night we played them at Langley Road, everything just clicked for us – every shot we hit went into the net. We have to be careful that we don’t travel to Comber on the 31st of August thinking that it’s going to be a foregone conclusion. It’s definitely not like that.”
Looking ahead to next year, the co-manager wants another promotion from NIWFA Division Two as Olympic continue to progress girls from the youth system into the first team. “The aim is always promotion – we want to continue to strengthen where we can and bring through the youth.
“We’re now in the brilliant position where we have four or five girls who started playing with our football club at the age of nine, ten years old, and they’re going to be playing in our senior ladies team next year. That’s fantastic, because that’s what it was all about when we started – trying to give those girls a pathway into senior football when they turn 16, 17 and into young adulthood,” Russell said.
Keen to point out that every teenager in the Olympic youth structure earns their place in the first team squad, Russell added: “They’re talented footballers, and that’s the main thing. They’re not being brought through because they’ve been here for five or six years and they’re ‘Olympic girls’ – they’ve worked really hard and they’re there on merit.”
