From the 2008–09 season onwards, the league system in Northern Ireland was re-structured. It would be renamed as the
IFA Premiership, and reduced to twelve teams, included on the basis not only of their performance in the 2007–08 season, but in the previous two seasons, and other off-the-field criteria as follows. Each applicant club was assessed by an independent panel and awarded points against the following criteria: •
Sporting – based on league placings, Irish Cup, League Cup and European performances in 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007–08; with points also awarded for running youth teams, women's teams and community development programmes. •
Finance – based on solvency, debt management and cash-flow projection. •
Infrastructure – based on stadium capacity, changing provisions, sanitary facilities, field of play, floodlighting, existence and standard of control room, first aid room, drug testing room and media facilities. •
Personnel – based on qualification and experience of staff •
Business planning •
Attendances Five of this season's sixteen Premier League teams failed to gain a place in the new twelve-team Premiership and were relegated to the newly introduced
IFA Championship. Of the five teams that missed out, two of them -
Armagh City and
Limavady United failed to obtain the necessary domestic licence, while
Larne did not apply.
Donegal Celtic obtained a licence, but were ranked thirteenth in the entry list, and thus missed out by one place. Finally,
Portadown also obtained a licence, but were relegated to the
IFA Championship as a result of submitting their application for the IFA Premiership 29 minutes past the deadline for consideration. That left thirteen clubs to be ranked - twelve from this season's Premier League plus
Bangor, who had finished fourth in the
First Division.
Rankings Source: BBC Sport ==References==