Thorplands United FC was formed in season 2002/2003 as a Sunday league side playing in the division 5 of the Sunday Alliance. The team had great success on the field and went on to complete the league and cup double, while also winning the leagues divisional fair play award for the season.

Season 2003/2004 saw us promoted to Division 1 of the Sunday Alliance where we duly finished runners up and gain promotion to the Premier division.

Season 2004/2005 Our first season in the Premier division saw us finish a creditable 3rd.

In September 2004 the Club Chairman at the time, John Spencer was approached by Northampton Borough Council and was informed of a new project being introduced into the town called “The Street Football Project” John was invited to join the project and contacted Pete Brewin and asked if he would join him in setting up a Youth team project for Thorplands United using young players from the street football project. Pete already held his level 2 coaching badge and successfully applied to become a Community Sports Coach with NBC coaching on the project.

Having learnt of the problems that some clubs encountered we set out to change the whole of the club and introduced a constitution, code of conducts and job descriptions.

We applied and were successful in achieving the FA Charter Standard Adult Award in February 2005. This set the standards for taking the club forward and we set about forming a Youth team. Our intention at the time was to form maybe 1 or 2 youth teams but we were overwhelmed by the response from the players we had and ended up having 11 teams in total. It was a massive step to take going from 1 Sunday morning team to 11 teams within months.

We obtained a grant of £6000 from the Catalyst Project to help us get started, we formed teams at Under 8’s, U9’s and U10’s playing mini soccer. Under 11 girls were playing small sided soccer while we had under 12’s, 14’s and 16’s entered into the local youth league. We had 3 teams playing in the Sunday Combination in Divisions, Premier, 3 and 7 and a Saturday team that went straight into the Premier Division of The Northampton Town League.

In November 2005 the Club was nominated and finished runners up in the Northamptonshire Sports Awards in the Development Club of the Year category. we again finished runners up for the same award in November 2006. Late November 2005 saw the club achieve FA Charter Standard Community Club status, only the 5th club in the county to achieve the award, and the first club in Northampton to do so.

In the first season most of our teams struggled for results, although our Saturday men’s team were successful in winning the Town League Cup beating Duston United on penalties after finishing 2-2 after extra time.

May 2006 saw further rewards for the effort that had gone into setting up the club. The club was awarded FA Charter Standard Community Club “Club of the Year” in the NFA awards. Pete Brewin was also voted “Volunteer of the Year” in the same awards for recognition of significant contribution throughout the season...

June 2006 saw us take the NFA awards a step further when we were named Charter Standard Regional “Community Club” winners. This was a fantastic achievement, meaning that we judged to be the best “Community Club” over 5 counties. All this achieved in just 15 months.

September 2006 saw us kick off the new season with 15 teams adding 4 new teams from the previous season. The emphasis during close season was to develop our girls and ladies section. We entered girls teams at under 12 and 14 into the youth league both playing 11 a side and ladies into the Northants Ladies Football League. Our men’s teams consist of 2 Saturday sides playing in the Prem and Division 1 of the Northampton Town League, 2 teams playing in the Northants Sunday Combination, 1 team in the Prem and 1 team in Division 3. We have Under 8’s 9’s and 10’s playing mini soccer and under 11’s 13’s 14’s 15’and 16’s playing in the boys youth league. We have also set up a TUFTY club (Thorplands United Football Training for Youngsters) for school years 1 & 2 (5-6 year olds) for both male and female footballers.

During the last 12 months we have trained 22 coaches to at least level 1 standard. We have a main Committee body of 7 people. We also have a parental Committee that is run by Annya Palmer our volunteer coordinator this committee is a parent representative from every youth team to have a say in the running of the club. We have managers meetings every 6 weeks to report on how their team is doing and share ideas to other managers. So far this season we have a total of 367 players registered to 4 different leagues.

The club is hoping for further success after we have again been nominated for the Northamptonshire Sports Awards and have reached the finals for development club of the year award. The final is to take place at Northampton Saints Rugby Club on November 1st.

Unfortunately we finished runners up for the second year running but can teake heart from the fact that we ahd made the finals in consecutive years and were the onoly club which had done so.

It is sometimes very difficult to organize and run a club of this growth and magnitude, but with the hard working Committee and group of volunteers we have, we believe that we will be the biggest club in the county within the next few years.

If you let me know what photographs you want, whether just the Town League sides or the entire club, I can organize whatever you want at short notice. You can also visit our websites at www.thorplandsunitedfc.co.uk or www.clubwebsite.co.uk/thorplandsunitedfc