Saturday 7 August 2010

Ledbury Town FC (England)

Ledbury Town come from the beautiful Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. The club was formed in 1893, and in keeping with the rural nature of their surrounds, as well as the black and white colour of their strip, are known as The Friesians to their fans.

They've got a curious history of working their way up the regional leagues, only to resign and go back down to county level. They joined the West Midlands Regional League in 1974, and were promoted almost by accident four years later, when despite finishing fifth they were considered to have better facilities than the clubs above them and bumped up a division almost against their will. However, in 1983 it all got a bit too much for them and they dropped out of the league altogether to go back to local football for the next eight years.

In 1991 they decided it was time that they moved back up into the biggish time again when they joined the Midland Combination, but soon tired of this and switched back to the West Midland Regional League again, where they got as high as the Premier Division until 2010, when they decided to shrink operations back again and join the Herefordshire Football League. But give them a couple of years and no doubt they'll start flipping their way through the leagues rather indecicively again.

Unusually though for a club at this level they've had an active international on their books, when Latvian cap Alex Volosanovs put in a small stint for them. But the biggest day of their footballing lives was when a reasonably strong Manchester United side visited to play a benefit match for a local family who'd lost members in a motorway crash. Ledbury made a good account of themselves, and even got a couple of goals, but lost 4-2 in the end. It's not mentioned in Van Der Sar was in goal or not though...

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