History of Donegal Celtic
[taken from the Donegal Celtic Website]

Founded in 1970 during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles by a group of friends hailing from the Lenadoon area in west Belfast. It was an aim of the founding members to provide a football team for the local community but also a forum wherein locals could organise events and entertainment during the darker days of Northern Ireland’s history and when he locality was starved of employment and inward investment. Andy McIlhatton, one of the founding members, purchased and from a farmer for around £200 with the aim of building a football venue that would help Celtic compete in junior ootball competitions. Donegal Celtic’s name was influenced by the locality. Streets in the Lenadoon estate, as well as Lenadoon itself, are all named after towns in Co Donegal, Creeslough and Falcarragh, for example. With a strong tradition of support for Glasgow Celtic and Belfast Celtic, who withdrew from Irish League football in 1949 due to civil unrest, Donegal Celtic didn’t take long to gather a strong fanbase and experience success in the game. After years of dominating competition in the Dunmurry League, then the Intermediate League, Celtic became an annual thorn in the sides of senior clubs in the Irish Cup. But, being a ‘Celtic’ team in Northern Ireland football is not a easy occupation and the club would no doubt have progressed into senior football much sooner had it not been for the obvious attempts to keep the club on the fringes. On more than 10 occasions voting members of the Irish Football League kept Celtic out and opted to bring in clubs such as Institute, Portstewart and Limavady United at our expense. It wasn’t until a joint legal challenge from Donegal Celtic and Lurgan Celtic, backed by the Equality Commission, against the IFL’s dubious voting patterns that the league finally buckled and opened its doors.

Nicknames: "DC", The Wee Hoops, The Belfast Hoops.