Warlingham F.C – A Brief History

Warlingham F.C was founded in 1896 and is affiliated to the Surrey F.A. The clubs base is at Church Lane, Warlingham where they moved in the early 1920’s. At this time they amalgamated with Warlingham Cricket Club to form Warlingham Sports Club.

In the early years the team played at various local venues including Blanchman’s field (now a nature reserve), the School field just past the green, and what are now allotments off Hillbury Road. The current Church Lane site was left to the people of Warlingham for the pursuit of sport and is now used to support our 16 junior teams and our “A”, “B”, “C” and Veterans teams.

During season 2011-2012 we entered into a ground sharing agreement with Ryman South team Whyteleafe having spent an enjoyable year there during the 2010-2011 season. This agreement allows us to retain our position in the Combined Counties league and pursue promotion to the CCL premier division. We continue to look for alternative local sites to build our own facility.

Our reserve team play at Verdayne (Hamsey Green Playing Field), which was leased, from Tandridge District Council in March 2004 specifically to allow us to gain promotion to the Cherry Red Records Combined Counties league.

In our long history we have gained virtually every honour available in Intermediate football and also achieved success at the next level having won the Combined Counties Div 1 title in season 05/06, the League Cup during the season just past and the Reserve section in both 04/05 and 06/07. In season 2010-2011 we entered the FA Vase for the first time and embarked on another exciting chapter in our history, reaching the 2nd round proper and finally losing 1-0 to Reading Town F.C. Last season we made history again with our first entry into the FA Cup although we went down 1-0 to Tunbridge Wells in the preliminary round.

In September 2008 we completed work on a new floodlit Astro training facility which has improved what we can offer our members in both our adult and colts sections.

Season 10/11 was a disappointing year for our adult teams with them all closing the year in strong positions in their respective leagues and then falling away in the New Year. This past season 11/12 was very different with all teams competing for honours right to the last with the 1st team winning the league cup and our “C” Team achieving the league and cup double.

Our Colts section continues to go from strength to strength and we are beginning to see the very real benefit of players coming through into the senior teams. Last year we had our most successful season ever. Our Soccer School has also proved successful and has already created new teams in Mini Soccer for the Colts section.

With our Colts section running 17 teams this season we are a bigger club than we have ever been in our history – again! They have had a very successful season 11/12 with our U13’s winning the treble of Surrey Cup, league and league cup, U14’s winning league and cup, U15’s winning league and cup and the U16’s winning the league.

Warlingham F.C. is a “community” club providing football for local people from age 4 through to Veterans and look forward to the future with excitement and determination as we strive for further success across all our teams.

After much hard work by a dedicated team we achieved the FA’s Charter Standard accreditation in December 2011.

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