[gazzae]

Originally Posted by iadom

I would support any team named after a distillery.
check out the sig.

Named after the Royal Irish Distillery.

In 1869, Dunville & Co., a firm of Belfast blenders, established the Royal Irish distillery near Grosvenor Road, in the outskirts of Belfast. Operations, on a scale not seen in Belfast before, began a year later. By producing pot still, malt and grain whiskey in its distillery, the company was soon completely self-sufficient and Dunville's whiskey obtained first gold medals at a range of exhibitions. Despite its initial success, the distillery could not avoid being dragged down in the general collapse of the Irish whiskey industry and basically closed in the late 1930s; a brief bout of distilling in the early 1950s led to the handful of bottles of Royal Irish whiskey still around. Although the main buildings survived until the 1980s, the Royal Irish distillery would have gone the way of many closed distilleries had it not spawned something that keeps its name very much alive beyond the last drop of its whiskey: a football club!
The story of a unique chapter in Ireland's whiskey heritage begins with Robert Baxter. Baxter moved from Banbridge to Belfast's Grosvenor Street in 1878. A keen cricketer, he became friendly with some of the employees of the nearby Royal Irish distillery and in the summer of 1879 they formed the V.R. Distillery Cricket Club under his captaincy. By the end of 1880, the members of the cricket club decided to form a football club in order to stay active during the winter months: Distillery Football Club was born and held its first practice session on November 20 1880.