Newly promoted Dankse Bank Premiership side Portadown have announced the signing of Castlewellan player Ruairi Croskery.
23-year old Ruairi Croskery has signed a two year contract at Shamrock Park ahead of the 2020-21 season writes Joshua Bunting.
Croskery spent four years at Manchester United and featured in the same Under-18 squad as current first team stars Marcus Rashford and Scott McTominay.
After his spell at Old Trafford he returned back to Northern Ireland to sign for Linfield. However, he made just one senior appearance for the Blues scoring a second-half header in a 1-0 win over Glenavon at Mourneview Park.
From Windsor Park, Croskery then moved onto Warrenpoint Town where he would play under his new manager at Portadown, Matthew Tipton. He would then help the club win the Championship in the 2016/17 season before moving to America.
Croskery has spent the last three years at Limestone University in South Carolina, USA where he played for Limestone College in the NCAA D2 Soccer Championship.
While at Limestone he was selected for the Conference Carolinas All-Tournament team in 2019, and in 2017 was named as the Conference Carolinas Tournament Most Outstanding player.
Portadown manager Tipton said: “I’m delighted to get Ruairi signed. He’s someone I worked with at Warrenpoint before he went to America on a football scholarship three years ago. We’ve stayed in touch over that time & I’m surprised he didn’t block my number with me constantly asking when he was coming home to sign for us.
“Ruairi has the ability to play in any of the forward positions and offers us something completely different to what we have now in terms of style of play.
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on him but I think he’s a player our fans will get excited about and one our players will enjoy playing with.”
On signing for the Shamrock Park club Croskery said: “I always kept in contact with Matthew Tipton over the three years I was in America and I told him I would come home to him.
“Once he got the Portadown job, I followed him on social media and I feel like I’ve been here for two years already, I’ve been speaking to him following the whole thing”.
Commenting on how he will fit into the system at Portadown, Croskery said: “I’ll play anywhere, I started as a striker at a young age played there for five years.
“I then played as a number 10 at Warrenpoint, and when I went to America played on the left and right wing so anywhere in the attack I’m fine with that so I’m looking forward to it.”
Ruairi Croskery also went on to outline his ambitions for the new season saying “I’m confident we can do well, we’ve got a young squad here and everybody’s hungry and I’m hungry coming in to the side. I think we’ll do well and I’ve doubt that we’ll stay up and push on from there”.
