Bangor RFC (Northern Ireland)

Bangor RFC is an Irish rugby football club from Bangor, County Down, playing in Division 2C of the All-Ireland League.

History

The club was founded in 1885 and enjoyed senior status between 1924 and the Second World War. The club returned to junior rugby after the war. Historically having played at Ward Park, leased from Bangor Borough Council, in 1968 the club purchased eleven acres of land on the southern outskirts of Bangor and opened a new ground named Upritchard Park (after chairman Joe Upritchard) in September 1969, coinciding with the regaining of senior status. Over the next 20 years, Bangor became one of the top senior clubs in Ulster, culminating in the 1981-82 season, when it won the treble of Ulster Senior League, Ulster Senior Cup and its own floodlit competition, the Boston Cup. Several Bangor players were selected for Ulster and Ireland. In 1975, three Bangor players - Roger Clegg, Billy McCombe and Dick Milliken - represented Ireland in the Five Nations. Millicken was a British Lion.^[1]

Bangor were inaugural members of the All-Ireland League in 1990, but the club went into decline and was relegated back into junior rugby in 2002. In 2016, however, the club regained senior status on promotion back to the All-Ireland League.

Since 1972, the club has been joined with Bangor Cricket Club as Bangor Rugby Football and Cricket Club.

Honours

• Ulster Senior Cup: 3
  • 1979-80, 1981–82, 1985–86
• Ulster Senior League: 7
  • 1929-30, 1974–75, 1976–77, 1980–81, 1981–82, 1982–83, 1987–88
• Ulster Towns Cup: 13
  • 1903-04, 1905–06, 1908–09, 1919–20, 1922–23, 1929–30, 1945–46, 1955–56, 1967–68, 1968–69, †1971-72, †1974-75, 2015–16
• Ulster Junior Cup: 1
  • 2015-16

† Won by 2nd XV

External links

• Club web site

References