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STANFORD IN THE VALE 

The first ever mention of a football club at Stanford was in 1908 when one of the Swindon papers published the score of a local cup match featuring a team called Stanford Thistle. Shortly afterwards in 1923 the team now known just as Stanford joined the North Berks league to play alongside other local teams. The period in the late 1920’s were a glorious time for Stanford and the team were in and around the top 3 places for a number of seasons. This culminated in 1929-30 when they became the first team to date to win the league championship, North Berks cup and Charity Shield under the captainship of Stanford legend Les Johnson. Stanford did not lose a North Berks game that season.

Following this successful season, Stanford were accepted as members of the Swindon and District league and played very competitively there for the next 36 years before returning to the North Berks league. In the mid 1930’s when Stanford had a very strong team Swindon town approached the committee and signed on local player Percy Bowl for the rest of the season. They agreed as compensation to play a testimonial match at Stanford with a full

Stanford-in-the-Vale FC 1929-30

Swindon team including the ex-Stanford player himself. More than 2000 people came to watch the match at the pitch which was then the other side of the road to where the pitch is nowadays. They came in their busloads to watch a strong Swindon team win 2-0. It remains the only time Stanford FC have hosted a football league team and the last as it would never be allowed now but in those days we were not overburdened by FA dictates as to safety and ground criteria. Percy Bowl went on to enjoy several good seasons with Swindon Town until war broke out.

It was during their time on the Swindon league that the club enjoyed some of their more notable successes. They competed in the Faringdon Thursday Memorial cup from its beginnings and were losing finalists in its first season in 1951-52. Since then Stanford have won the cup 4 times, 3 times in the 1950’s and the last of which was in 1988-89.

They also managed to reach the Norths Berks cup ‘Jubilee Final’ in 1957 where on April 20th they defeated a strong East Hendred side 4-3 in a close fought affair to lift their second ever trophy in the competition. Possibly the biggest achievement in the clubs history came on 31st March 1951 when Stanford, captained by Cyril Timms, won their one and only County cup against Lane End ofWycombe at the Culham Road ground in Abingdon.

Stanford-in-the-Vale from the 1950’s

This led to promotion to the intermediate cup and only 2 years later Stanford were losing finalists to Lambourn FC making this their highest ranking cup appearance to date. Towards the end of the 1950’s and early 1960’s it became more difficult for a small village like Stanford-in-the-Vale to compete with teams that had bigger catchment areas and with players finding transportation a lot easier the bigger teams started to attract away the better players from all the village teams in the area. Consequently Stanford started to struggle in the Swindon league and after 36 years, mostly spent in the top division, Stanford applied to rejoin the North Berks league in the 1966-67 season. Just one season later a reserve team was also entered and that is how it remains today. There followed a barren spell where the team were competitive but league and cup honours eluded them despite a losing visit by the reserves to the League Cup final in 1975-76 and the first team losing in the Faringdon Thursday Memorial cup in 1990-91. The mid 90’s brought a resurgence in team fortunes and 1995-96 saw the reserves win the 5th division, reach the League cup final and win the AG Kingham cup seeing off several 2nd division sides along the way. They repeated this in 1998-99 only this time they won both the league cup and the AG Kingham cup. The first team won division 2 in 1997-98 and reached 4 semi-finals but ended up only with winning the War Memorial cup for the first time in club history. It was during the return of Stanford FC to the North Berks that again Swindon Town came enquiring after one of our star players Glyn Pendell. Thankfully Glyn stayed at the club to become one of Stanford’s most outstanding players. He played 762 North Berks league and cup games and scored 638 goals during this time despite playing his last few seasons in midfield !!

One of the main reasons that Stanford has such a long unbroken history is down to the hard working committees over the years and some outstanding individuals.

One such man was Eddie Stenzhorn who moved to the village and joined the club in 1949. Eddie served as player, trainer, physio, manager and long time committee member up till his death in 2007. Just weeks before he died he was still sweeping out the changing rooms event though he was well into his 80’s. People like Eddie and his son Martin are the lifeblood of small village clubs and across the county there are others selflessly giving their time to their own local club and keeping them alive.  There were other notable Stanford ‘legends’ such as Percy ‘tut’ Froud who was vice captain in the victorious 1929 team and after him his son John.   Percy had to work on his fathers farm before cycling the 6 miles to Stanford to play and then back to work on the fields.

Stanford-in-the-Vale FC present clubhouse

That’s dedication for you ! His son John was a prolific goalscorer for Stanford and later in his career Grove. Another famous Stanford son John Pounds was one of the most inspirational captains of the club and always led by example on the field where he was a feared and respected opponent. There are many more great examples on and off the field past and present that have helped to make Stanford the club it is today and we are grateful to all of them. All at the club would like to congratulate the North Berks on a successful first 100 years and look forward to playing a big part in the next 100 !!