Saturday 28 April 2018

Northern Ireland - 2017/18 NIFL Premiership


The Northern Ireland Football League (commonly abbreviated to NIFL), also known as the Irish League, is the national football league of Northern Ireland. It was formed in 2013 to assume independent collective management of the top three levels of the Northern Ireland football league system; namely the PremiershipChampionship and NIFL Premier Intermediate League.


The 2017–18 NIFL Premiership (known as the Danske Bank Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is the 117th season of the Irish League overall and the fifth as the Northern Ireland Football League. The season began on 11 August 2017 and is scheduled to conclude in May 2018. 
The winner qualifies for the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League while the runner-up along with potentially the third-placed team and the play-off winners will qualify for the 2018–19 UEFA Europa League.
Twelve teams will compete in the 2017–18 NIFL Premiership. Portadown were relegated after finishing bottom of the 2016–17 NIFL Premiership and were replaced by Warrenpoint Town as the winners of the 2016–17 NIFL Championship.
Carrick Rangers finished second from bottom but retained their Premiership place after winning the promotion-relegation play-off against NIFL Championship promotion play-off winners Institute 5–2 on aggregate.





Linfield are the defending champions from the previous season.


Format
During matches 1–22 each team plays every other team twice (home and away).
During matches 23–33 each team will play every other team for the third time (either at home, or away).
During matches 34–38 each team will play every other team in their half of the table once. As this is the fourth time that teams play each other this season, home sides are chosen so that they will have played each other twice at home and twice away.





Crusaders win title

Play-offs


UEFA Europa League play-offs
Teams finishing fourth to seventh will take part in Europa League play-offs to decide one team who will qualify for next season's Europa League first qualifying round.

NIFL Premiership play-offs

Pre-play-off

The runners-up and third-placed teams from the Championship will take part (over two legs) in the Championship promotion pre-play-off.

Play-off

The eleventh-placed team from the Premiership will play the winners of the pre-play-off over two legs for one spot in the 2018–19 NIFL Premiership.




Source: https://www.nifootballleague.com/
             http://www.itv.com

No comments:

Post a Comment