Worksop Town Football Club is an English football club based in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. The team play in the Northern Premier League Premier Division. They are nicknamed The Tigers and play their home games at Sandy Lane in Worksop.
History
Previous clubs
The club claims it was originally founded in 1861, which would make it the fourth oldest association football club in the world, however, no contemporary evidence to back up this claim has yet been found.[1] As of 2023[update], the earliest record of a game of association football being played in the town comes from December 1875, when the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reported that a Worksop team had won its opening match against Harthill.[4] The earliest record of the club using the "Town" suffix comes from 1882, when Worksop played Eckington on 18 February.[7]
The Town club joined the Sheffield & District Football League in 1892 and also played in the Sheffield Association League during the late 1890s after an unsuccessful one-year spell in the Midland League. Worksop re-joined the Midland League in 1900 and became a prominent member of the competition before the First World War. It finished third in the league in 1903 and, in 1908, reached the first round of the FA Cup for the first time, losing 1–9 at Stamford Bridge to Chelsea in front of 18,995 spectators.[8]
After the First World War put a halt to football activity in the town, the game returned in 1919 when Worksop Town and Manton Athletic merged to become Worksop and Manton Athletic,[9] although the Worksop Town name remained in popular usage. The club joined the Midland League and in 1921 won the competition for the first time. The 1920s provided the club with its best spell in the FA Cup, reaching the first round in four out of six seasons from 1921. In 1923, it drew Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane – the Tigers pulled off a shock by holding Spurs to goal-less draw. The Worksop board decided against hosting the replay at Central Avenue, and it was beaten 0–9 in the replay two days after the original tie, again at White Hart Lane. In 1926, it reached the second round for the first time after beating Coventry City at Central Avenue in the first round – eventually losing by one goal to three to Chesterfield in the next round.
In 1930, the club withdrew from the Midland League and disbanded, with a new Worksop Town club being formed a week later.[10] The new outfit initially played in the Sheffield Association League and Central Combination, before joining the Yorkshire League in 1935. This latest incarnation lasted less than a decade, being wound up during the Second World War.
Current club
After the end of the Second World War, another new club was formed by the name of Worksop Town Athletic, although the Athletic suffix would soon fall out of use. They initially competed in the Sheffield Association League, but later joining the Midland League. In 1956, it progressed to the third round of the FA Cup for the only time in its history, beating Skegness Town and Bradford City before losing to Swindon Town at the County Ground. Worksop won up its second Midland League title in 1966 before becoming a founder member of the Northern Premier League (NPL) two years later. It returned to the Midland League after just one year, however, as the Tigers finished bottom in the NPL's inaugural season.
Worksop won its third and last Midland League title in 1973 and, a year later, re-joined the NPL, eventually finding its feet at this higher level. In 1978, it once more reached the first round of the FA Cup, losing 1–5 to Barnsley at Oakwell. In 1989, it was relegated to Division 1 of the NPL, and had to move to play in Gainsborough when it was evicted from its Central Avenue home. It spent three years in Gainsborough before returning to the newly built Sandy Lane ground in Worksop in 1992.
The Tigers regained NPL Premier Division status in 1998, by which time Chris Waddle was playing for Worksop, and, in 1999, it finished as runner-up in the NPL, only just missing promotion to the Football Conference. In 2004, it was a founder member of the Conference North, but it only lasted three years in the division before being relegated back to the Northern Premier League. It was around this time that the club fell into financial difficulties and lost ownership of its home ground at Sandy Lane, being forced to rent the grounds of Hucknall Town, Ilkeston Town and Retford United for three years.
In 2011, the club finally returned to Sandy Lane, but this time as tenants of Worksop Parramore, which had bought the ground and allowed the Tigers to play there. The 2013–14 season almost saw Worksop promoted back to the Conference North but it was beaten in the league play-off semi-finals. At the end of the season, the club's owner, Jason Clark, revealed that he would no longer be funding the club, plunging it into a financial crisis, and shortly afterwards the decision was taken to resign from the Northern Premier League and to join the Northern Counties East League (NCEL), entering the NCEL's Premier Division.[11]
The drop to the ninth level of the English football league system also meant a first foray into the FA Vase, having previously competed in the FA Trophy. Worksop were crowned Northern Counties East League champions at the end of the 2018–19 season, winning promotion back to the Northern Premier League.
On 18 March 2023, the club won the Division One East title in the Northern Premier League with seven games of the season remaining, the first team in English football to secure promotion in the 2022–23 season.[12]
Worksop initially played at two different grounds on Netherton Road before, along with the cricket club, it moved to Bridge Meadow, also known as Newcastle Avenue, in 1891. This had separate cricket and football pitches along with a quarter-mile track. In 1901, it moved across the River Ryton to Central Avenue, staying there until 1988, when it was forced to move, and play in Gainsborough. It returned to its home town in 1992 when a new ground was built on Sandy Lane. It lost ownership of Sandy Lane in 2005 and again had to groundshare elsewhere before returning to Sandy Lane in 2011, this time as tenants of Worksop Parramore.
Gallery
A series of pictures taken at the Worksop Town vs. Sheffield Wednesday friendly match in July 2011.
^The club itself claims to have been formed in 1861,[1] but this claim is based on club minute books from 1914 rather than contemporary sources. Football historian Martin Westby suggests a foundation year of 1873, based on a newspaper article from that year reporting a rugby union game at the Worksop Pestallozzian School as being 'probably the first game of football ever played in the town'.[2][3] The earliest record of association football being played in Worksop comes from 1875, when a club representing the town first started playing regular fixtures.[4] The club has also been dissolved and reformed on several occasions, most notably in 1930.[5]
References
^ abStocks, J. (2017) A History of Worksop Town FC volume one.
^Westby, M. (2017) A History of Sheffield Football: 1857-1889.
