{"id":416325,"date":"2025-09-11T17:21:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/416325\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T17:21:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:21:17","slug":"ni-football-fund-announcement-was-a-good-day-for-football-despite-mixed-reaction-gerard-lawlor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/416325\/","title":{"rendered":"NI Football Fund announcement was \u2018a good day for football\u2019 despite mixed reaction: Gerard Lawlor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Gerard Lawlor (far left) at the NI Football Fund reveal at the Blanchflower Stadium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/110925SH2_0012.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Gerard Lawlor (far left) at the NI Football Fund reveal at the Blanchflower Stadium<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Northern Ireland Football League chief executive Gerard Lawlor has insisted today was \u2018a good day for football\u2019 despite a mixed reaction to the announcement by Sports Minister Gordon Lyons revealing which clubs were in line for government money through the NI Football Fund.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Glentoran and Cliftonville were the big winners being placed in the \u00a36million plus bracket for public finance to improve The Oval and Solitude, but there was disappointment for other Irish League clubs \u2013 including Coleraine and Portadown, plus Ards and Institute \u2013 who were hoping for money to build their own ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gerard Lawlor (far left) at the NI Football Fund reveal at the Blanchflower Stadium Northern Ireland Football League&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,58912,8541,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-416325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-playr-fit-championship","10":"tag-sports-direct-premiership","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115186819720555243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}