History
The competition began as a straight knock-out competition in 1986–87, and also included teams from the Irish League B Division until 1997–98. From 1998–99 until 2007–08, only senior (Irish League and Irish Premier League teams have competed, but the competition was opened up to the IFA Championship for 2008–09.
The competition began with a straight knock-out format, but from 2001–02 until 2007–08, a group/knock-out system was used.
When it was first introduced it was one of a number of senior cup competitions in Northern Ireland run by the Irish League, originally to compensate for the relatively few league fixtures (traditionally 22 or 26), but also as vehicles for sponsorship revenue. The League Cup would have been considered less prestigious than the long-standing Gold Cup and Ulster Cup. Over the past decade or so, however, these other cup competitions have been phased out as the number of Irish League fixtures has increased and the public appetite for additional competitions has reduced, leaving the League Cup as the only surviving cup competition run by the Irish League and now established as the third most prestigious competition in Northern Ireland.
The actual trophy is the old City Cup, which was another senior Irish League competition that was ended in 1975.
Read more about this topic: Irish League Cup
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)