History tells us the finest Football Clubs were founded in the most inauspicious of venues. Formed by ordinary men all with a passion for a simple game. At the turn of the century in 1905 Chelsea were being formed in an upstairs room at the Rising Sun pub. In Barcelona, a few years previously, on 29 November 1899 to be exact, Joan Gamper founded FC Barcelona, along with eleven other enthusiasts of ‘football’ in a café in the city. The game of football was still largely unknown in the country of Spain at the time so how truly remarkable it is that a club founded a further seven years previously is still at the very heart of Guernsey Football.

Seven men gathered on a Friday evening in November to discuss a plan to form arguably Guernsey’s foremost football club. Northerners AC was founded in Vale café (which is now a private house overlooking Delancey Park) and its seven founding members on that Friday night were: Dr Jones, Robert Lower, Mr Daniels, Walter Savage, John Hanley, RT Osler and William Bird, and so keen were they to get their club started that it played its very first game the next day at Delancey. Those seven footballing founders came from a variety of professions and walks of society.

There’s no record of whom the club played that day but what may come as a surprise to the fans of the chocolate and blues is that the team started their first match in green shirts and black shorts. The club continued in these colours for the next ten years until the wife of one of Guernsey’s footballing forefathers, the prosperous stone merchant and North Club President Mr William Stranger, decided the team required a make over. William and Ellen Stranger dedicated their lives to Island life and in particular Guernsey football after their three sons had been tragically killed during the 1st world War.
(The Stranger family memorial can be found at Vale Church cemetery). Ellen Stranger, insisted that the club needed a stylish new kit and chose the now famous ‘chocolate and blue’. The club contested for the ‘Stranger Cup’ at this time in honour of their popular president. The competition later became the foremost cup competition for Guernsey’s senior club teams but back in William’s day , the Stranger Cup was contested by just North such was the significant number of registered players who were split into eight sides to battle it out with each other to win the trophy. More controversially, the reason for the formation of the cup competition was because the club, for just one season, quit the GFA unhappy at its treatment around the council table. But upon its return to the GFA a year later, it decided to present the cup to the GFA, which decided to make it into an annual competition.

North were soon the team to beat winning their first Priaulx Cup [First Division Title] in 1900, and since then has gone on to win more titles than any other Guernsey side. The club was also the winner of the first ever Upton to be held between the Guernsey and Jersey champions in 1907 when North beat the Jersey Caesareans 3-0 at home. However they failed to hold on to their crown the following year when they lost in Jersey, to Jersey Wanderers 2-1 aet. William Bird, president of the club from 1904 – 1936 remembers North went down to Jersey that day with just one supporter, Philip Vaudin. That had all changed by the Upton in 1933 when more than 1,800 ‘Northerners’ made the trip across to Jersey, and although North once again lost 2-1 to Jersey Wanderers, Mr Bird said the game would always be remembered for the highly respectful procession the club and its supporters embarked on to the cenotaph before the match where it laid a wreath out of respect for the sister island’s war dead.

The 1926/27 season was arguably the club’s most historic when its first team won every single match it played and captured the Priaulx, Upton, Jeremie, Martinez and Stranger trophies – the club was presented with a special trophy by the GFA to mark the achievement of that season. That same season the Guernsey Muratti team contained nine Northerners, and although the greens lost 2-1 aet, the following year with seven North players in the line-up, Guernsey swamped Jersey 7-1 in Jersey.

During that decade Busty Warr was the club’s lynchpin and captain and by the 30’s North were ruffling feathers with teams from the mainland. The Royal Navy have visited Guernsey every year since the 1914-18 war and they had won every match here until that year. On New Year’s Day, North beat them 1-0. It was not only their first defeat by a Guernsey team, but it was also their only defeat in the 1933-34 season. That was no flash in the pan, either, for at Eastertide in the same year, North beat Lovell’s Athletic. Lovell’s were undefeated champions of the Western League that season and it reflects well on the Northerners’ that they beat them by three goals to one. Another record held by the North, or at least by a Northerner, is that of having the youngest captain ever to be presented with the Upton Park Cup. The player was Jack Marley. His age was twenty-one and the year was 1936. The North’s opponents were Old St Paul’s and the match was played at the track. The final score was 3-1.

Through the years the club has gone on to produce a number of local players that have gone on and made it in the professional grade. Richard ‘Flip’ Le Flem, famous for his corkscrew runs, who went on to be capped at under-23 level for England against Holland, played for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Middlesbrough and Leyton Orient.
Another Northerner to make the international grade was the inside right Barry Mahy, one of the stars of the 1961-63 side. He turned professional with Scunthorpe United and later made his way to America where he played for New York Cosmos and impressed so much that he was chosen to play for Team America. He also had the distinction of captaining a New York side, which included none other than the legendary Pele.
But red-headed wing half Ron Farmer was the first and he went on to play for Coventry City.
Believe it or not, after dominating the early decades of Guernsey football, North had to wait from 1963, when they completed an Upton hat-trick, until 1990 to win another Priaulx title. They did so with a memorable 7-0 win over St Martin’s at Northfield, needing just a draw. They then won the next two league titles, but would once again have to wait a long time – another 15 years to win it again when they did so in 2007, and repeated that feat in 2009.
It is not just on the domestic front that North has been a formidable outfit. In the years that the club entered the Dorset Senior Cup at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s it was a tough opponent for many mainland teams.

Its most successful entries into that competition came in the 1987/88 season when the side reached the semi-finals only to lose a winnable semi-final at home to Bridport, 3-2, and then in the 1989/90 season when again North reached the semi-final and lost. This time away, to Swanage Town & Herston, 2-0.

For those who didn’t know – Northfield has not always been the club’s home. It used to be The Track until in 1973, North officially opened Northfield on Saturday 18 August. The then-Bailiff Sir John Loveridge kicked off the specially arranged game with Vale Rec, but unfortunately the match ended in defeat, 6-1 to Vale Rec, who 20 years earlier had invited North to play the inaugural game at Corbet Field.

In 1990, the club played its first game under its new floodlights and signalled a bright future for a football club celebrating 125 years in 2017. The club today is as inclusive, entertaining and competitive as ever and with a broad and dedicated group of volunteers, continues to set the standards in Guernsey Football.