Stafford Rangers
The Stafford Rangers Football Club is an English football club from Stafford . While the team never got out of non-league football at league level , they often reached the main rounds of the English Cup competition and won the FA Trophy twice .
history
The exact date of foundation of the Stafford Rangers cannot be determined, as relevant documents were lost at the beginning of the 20th century. Based on newspaper articles, however, it can be narrowed down to the years 1876 or 1877. Initially mainly active in friendly matches, the team first appeared in a main round in the FA Cup in 1884. Until the Second World War , the club appeared mainly in the regional Birmingham & District League , in which he initially played in the front of the table, but later had to struggle with financial problems. With the beginning of the war, the club dissolved due to a lack of enough players, but was founded again in 1945.
In 1968 the Stafford Rangers rose to the Northern Premier League , the top division outside the Football League at the time . A year later, Roy Chapman , who ended his playing career, joined the club as a player-coach and led him to one of the most successful times in the club's history. In 1972, the team won the triple of championship in the Northern Premier League, FA Trophy and the regional Staffordshire Senior Cup under his leadership . Nevertheless, admission to the Football League was denied. Three years later, the club also reached the fourth main round in the FA Cup, the decisive defeat against Peterborough United followed over 30,000 spectators. In 1979 the club won the FA Trophy again and in the same year was one of the founding members of the Alliance Premier League , today's Football Conference. In 1983 the team was relegated, but returned two years later. In the following years it occupied mainly places in the middle of the table. After relegation in 1995, the club crashed in the following season and played for a few years in the lower class area.
2003 rose the Stafford Rangers as second in the table of the Southern Football League in the sixth class Conference North . Three years later, it was enough for the runner-up here, synonymous with the return to the Football Conference as the top division in non-league football. In the first year the club just kept the class, in 2008 the relegation followed. After three years, the team was relegated to the Northern Premier League Premier Division .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c staffordrangersfc.co.uk: "STAFFORD RANGERS FC - CLUB HISTORY" ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 11, 2011)
