Spelthorne Sports

Spelthorne Sports FC is a non-league football club from the south west suburbs of London by the border of Middlesex and Surrey who were formed in 1922 and competing in local football for several decades at their Spelthorne Sports Club home.

‘Spelly’ were crowned as Middlesex Premier League champions in 1994-95 and then  again in 2001-02 under managers Paul M Jones and Ian Croxford as Wes Coles starred. The club moved to the Western section of the Surrey County Intermediate League in 2007-08.

In their second season in the competition the title was won with Steve Flatman as manager for the club to progress to the Surrey Elite Intermediate League. Junior Wright was voted as player of the year in 2010-11 as the title was lifted with Spelly promoted to Division One of the Combined Counties League.

After finishing in seventh and then sixth place Sports lifted the Division One title in 2013-14 as floodlights were installed while the team went on a forty-six game unbeaten run and also won two cup competitions.

The team settled into their Premier Division surroundings, finishing sixth in 2014-15 and then once again in 2018-19 at which point manager Flatman stepped down to be replaced by joint bosses Paul Burgess and Mark Harper.

Spelthorne sat in second place when the 2019-20 season ended early owing to the COVID-19 pandemic before Burgess departed to take the Staines Lammas managerial role to leave Harper in sole charge. The club was placed in Premier Division North in 2021-22, finishing in midtable.

Harper left for Chertsey Town in May 2023 to be replaced by Myles Hook with the Spelly being transferred to Premier Division South where they finished in the lower reaches in 2023-24.

Spelthorne Sports FC will play in the Combined Counties League Premier Division South in the 2024-25 season.

My visit

Spelthorne Sports 1 Virginia Water 0 (Tuesday 1st September 2020) FA Cup Extra Preliminarily Round (att: c200)

The FA Cup provided plenty of options for groundhoppers on this Tuesday evening, with the various rounds of the competition being played midweek and with all games going straight to penalties if level after ninety minutes.

While firmly a traditionalist, unprecedented times required flexibility. There was also something quite exciting about seeing a game concluded there and then. I left it to Tony to select our match. He was most considerate suggesting a few but going for one at a new venue for me.

There was no danger of my pal of been before to most of the home grounds on the fixture list as he had only just delved into Step 5 and 6 non-league football; something he vowed he wouldn’t be doing, but that was prior to COVID. Unprecedented times, as I say.

I was picked up at North Harrow with the roads extremely quiet. It was hard to judge as we were just back into travel to football, but the lack of traffic was an eye opener to both of us. We arrived in good time down near the ground.

The sat nav sent us up a dead end, but I knew that we were close, as we had passed the ground in the past on route to games at Walton and Hampton. Tony found a parking space across on Alexandra Road, across Staines Road West from the entrance to the ground.

We booked our tickets in advance online for £7 with our names ticked off on arrival, which doubled up as track and trace. Programmes were £1.50 with a cuppa a quid. We had our drinks while taking in the surroundings.

Homely and compact on the roadside of the ground is a fair description. There were three sections of cover, with two little seated stands, one in the far corner and one with a couple of steps of terracing but missing half its roof. 

It was nice to see all three constructions were home made with wood rather than the bought in ready to assemble identikit metal varieties.

Despite the low covers and its proximity to the main road, a mixture of control from the players and protection from trees meant that it was over an hour into the match before a ball left the ground. Plenty of passing motorists sounded their horns as if to join in.

We even had a couple of freeloaders the other side of the metal fence stopping off to take in some of the action from the footpath.

We experienced a tight game in which the two Spelly wide men impressed. ‘Waters’ looked the more likely of the sides to progress early on as their long throws into the box created problems with the host keeper flapping a little.

The referee had a pretty good game but gave a highly debatable penalty to Sports in the first half. Justice was seen to be done, at least in our opinion when the Virginia Water keeper saved the spot kick.

Gradually the home side took the initiative and eventually went ahead in the second half and went on to defend their advantage with a degree of comfort having learned to deal with the throws and keeping the visitors to efforts from range.

It had been a pleasant evening out. The decent weather and no other competitive football had given the FA Cup a boost at this early stage with bumper crowds. Hopefully it would see of the "newbies" will return to their local clubs as the season progressed.

We made even quicker time home reflecting on a decent new tick on our grounds list, and one that it was most certainly more pleasant to visit in good weather.