Who are we?
We are a small volunteer committee dedicating our time to fundraise and organise the County Antrim's participation in the 2025 tournament, entering a Junior and a Premier team.
Over the past few years the County Antrim Juniors reached the final in 2023 and the Premier team successfully won the tournament a few years ago. For 2025 we would love for both teams to reach the final and go all the way to win it!
Our Club is focused on providing the teams with an opportunity to play centre stage football that could increase their potential of getting signed with a major football club both inside and outside of Northern Ireland.
We want to create a level playing field for County Antrim players with other more well-funded academies and to compete with teams who travel to the tournament from across the world.
Playing in the Supercup NI tournament helps players to become socially connected to other players across multiple academy teams and provides an educational stepping stone to becoming a professional footballer. We welcome all players from across the County including those living in rural catchments, ethnically diverse communities and those living in areas of deprivation.
We want to cultivate the players reaching their full potential both on and off the pitch, whilst making it a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone.
Why are we crowdfunding?
We value diversity and inclusion and each year sponsorship is getting harder to achieve. In order to make the players involvement affordable, we are trying to raise funds to create an accessible gateway for boys, to participate in one of Northern Ireland's biggest sporting events.
The Supercup NI Tournament is targeted at the children and young people age group with County Antrim submitting both an under 14 and under 16 age team category.
We aim to create an inclusive environment that aims to have equal opportunities for all.
We pride ourselves in creating an environment where the boys will not not only train and play safely, but we want to achieve a collaboration between the two teams to train and work together so their ability and skills will be increased. This will lead to building the players confidence and leadership skills and adapting them to play at high competitive levels.
We require support to help with a number of costs from facility/training pitch hire (to include trials, training and playing pre tournament friendlies with other teams), transport costs to hire mini coaches to transport the teams to and from tournament matches, along with opening parade transport.
Fundraising this way will allow individuals and organisations to donate into one bigger pot, which will hopefully help to reduce any financial barriers that may prevent boys from taking part in the trial process or if selected, participating in the final tournament. Raising funds this way will help to support that everyone has the opportunity to trial and play for County Antrim regardless of their economic/financial background.
How we’ll spend the money raised
All money raised will go directly towards the delivery of the following aspects:
- Facility/pitch hire - Looking at bringing both teams together to train at one location. Facility hire will be used for trial process - training - friendly matches.
- It will allow us to purchase equipment such as new balls.
- Transport hire and petrol costs - For the two teams to have their own mini coach to transport to and from tournament matches over the Supercup NI week and to also provide one larger coach to transport the two teams together for the opening Parade in Coleraine.
- Team Kits / Training gear for the players and coaching team.
Community impact
Fundraising through Crowdfunded will help us reach more individuals and businesses who would like to show support but donating into this fund and seeing exactly what their donations help to support with.
It will help hugely to provide the boys with a stepping stone into this level of football at such a young age, but importantly it will make the accessibility of allowing more boys to apply to trial, and if selected, play for their County in a major well known tournament hosted in Northern Ireland.
We are hoping this will also open the gateway to encourage more boys from all aspects of the community to come and trial to showcase their skills and confidence no matter where they live within the County region.
Our Crowdfunder will no doubt help to create an overall positive impact on their overall wellbeing, enhancing the boys mental health, helping them to grow within the sport they love and continuing to keep them physically active to maintain healthier lifestyles.
Our Crowdfunder will create a pathway for the boys to continue their love for the sport when the tournament ends. In addition everyone who applies gets an opportunity to attend trials and benefit from feedback from leading coaches.
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!
4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!