Maidenhead United (England)

Those of you not up-to-speed with the glorious world of non-league football may still be aware of Maidenhead United - but not be entirely sure why. Well perhaps it's because the hold a couple of pretty spectacular records. Formed in 1870 as Maidenhead Football Club, they played their first game at their second home in York Road on 16 February 1871 against their life-long local rivals Marlow, where they have played continuously ever since. This makes theirs the oldest continuously used football ground in the world!

It was also apt that it was Marlow that they played in that first game, as the pair of them are tied in having played in the most FA Cup competitions - the oldest knockout tournament in the world - having each missed just the one year since it was first played back in 1871. This makes them the teams with the longest involvement in a single tournament in history! Most clubs don't get remotely close to having even one world record, so this little club from the middle-sized town in Berkshire is supremely blessed to have two!

York Road can squeeze 3000 into its quaint concretey enclosure, and its creaky old club houses and tea huts are among the best loved in the upper echelons of the non-league pyramid. Currently mid-table regulars in the Blue Square South - the sixth tier in English football - their pinacle of their footballing achievements was when they reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup - although that was back in its debut year when only 15 clubs had entered.

Things began to move along a little more when they merged with their less popular local rivals Maidenhead Norfolkians and first adopted the stripes in 1920, and called the new club first Maidenhead Town, and very soon after Maidenhead United, the name they have kept to this day. Despite York Road's thankfully small health and safety sensible crowd limit, their biggest gate was a massive 7989 when they played Southall in the quarter finals of the FA Amateur Cup in 1936 - and if any of you have ever lucky enough to have visited the place, you'll be at a loss to work out where they managed to put them all!

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