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Founded in 1980 
History of the Club
Like
a number
of clubs playing in the Premiership and the Football League,
St. Edmunds Boys was started by church parishioners, in this instance those connected with
St. Edmunds Church in Abingdon. It was decided to call the team St. Edmunds after one of the
town’s most famous sons, Edmund Rich, who was born in
St. Edmunds Lane, Abingdon in about 1175 and became Archbishop of
Canterbury
in 1234.
The start of the club
in the autumn of 1980 was advertised and the first training session attended by about 40 boys aged
between 6 and 16, was held at St. Edmunds School. A committee was formed to run the club and regular
training sessions and a few matches against other clubs followed. Because of the wide range of ages,
arranging games against other teams was difficult and early in 1982 it was decided to enter a team
in the
Most newly formed
teams find their first season very hard. St. Edmunds was no exception but a few games were won and
the team progressed the following season into the U13 section finishing in a very creditable mid
table position. In 1984 a second team was started and the U12 and U14 sections were entered. The U14
team had a very difficult season and with little enthusiasm to continue was wound up leaving the
club with only one team again to enter the following season in the U13 section. This team continued
through to play in the U14 and U15 sections of the
During this period the first major expansion of the Club took place in younger age groups. In 1987 sufficient boys had joined the club to start an U12 team and after some advertising for boys for an U10 side about 40 boys turned up to the first training session and they became the nucleus of U8, U9 and U10 teams. From running one team the previous season the Club now had five teams.
The size of the Club
remained steady for three seasons but in 1990 two further teams were formed and difficulties were
being experienced finding sufficient pitches. The European School, St. Edmunds School, Our Lady’s
Convent, R.A.F. Abingdon and Culham Parish Council had all kindly allowed the club to use their
pitches, usually for no charge, but it was felt that the Club needed a ground of it’s own. It was
decided to approach
Meanwhile improvements were taking place on the playing side with the U10 teams in 1990 and 1994 both reaching the cup finals which were played at Oxford United’s ground, The Manor. In April 1993 the U15 team won the clubs first major honour winning the cup final by an incredible score line of 9-1.
With two pitches on
the new ground the Club thought their pitch problem would be over but during the next five years the
second major expansion gradually took place and by the autumn of 1998 fifteen teams were playing,
with two teams in five of the age groups. Most of the teams were still playing at Boxhill but
pitches at
The same five years
saw a steady improvement in the quality of all the teams culminating in1999 when the U13 team won
the
The most recent major
development in the club’s history was the forging of a link in 1998 with the Town’s senior club,
Abingdon Town F.C. It was hoped that the link would benefit both clubs as teams from St. Edmunds
feed into the
Geoff Young
Club Secretary and co founder (with John Nugent)