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Sheffield Football Club is an English football club from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, although now based in nearby Dronfield, across the county boundary in Derbyshire.
They currently compete in the Northern Premier League Division One East.
Founded in October 1857, the club is recognised by FIFA as the oldest existing club still playing football in the world.
Sheffield FC initially played games under the Sheffield Rules and did not officially adopt the new FA rules until 1878.
The club competes in the Rules derby with near neighbours Hallam.
In 2007, they were inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame, to commemorate their 150th anniversary.
On the pitch, the club's finest hour came in 1904 when they won the FA Amateur Cup, a competition conceived after a suggestion by Sheffield. They also finished as runners up of the FA Vase in 1977.
In 1855, members of a Sheffield cricket club organised informal kick-abouts without any official rules. Subsequently, two members, Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, formed the Sheffield Football Club.
More information: Sheffield FC
The inaugural meeting of the club took place on 24 October 1857 at Parkfield House in the suburb of Highfield.
The original headquarters was a greenhouse on East Bank Road lent by Thomas Asline Ward, father of the first club president Frederick Ward, and the adjacent field was used as their first playing ground. Initially, Sheffield FC games were played among club members themselves and took the format of Married v Singles or Professionals v the Rest.
Creswick and Prest were responsible for drawing up the club's rules of play, which were decided upon at the club's AGM on 21 October 1858, and published the following year. They were referred to as the Sheffield Rules, and were the first detailed set of rules of football to be published by a football club (as opposed to a school or university).
At the time, before the formation of the Football Association (FA), many different kinds of football were popular in England. For example, each of the various public schools played football according to their own individual rules, and these varied widely. The Sheffield Rules were later adopted by the Sheffield Football Association when it was formed in 1867.
Sheffield's near neighbour, Hallam, was formed in 1860 and in the same year the two clubs first met each other in a local derby which is still contested today. By 1862 there were 15 clubs in the Sheffield area.
Sheffield have played at a number of grounds around Sheffield. Initially they played at Strawberry Hall Lane Park. However, like all of the early grounds they played at, it was not owned by the club. In the following years they would play at Old Forge ground and a ground near Hunter's Bar on Ecclesall Road.
More information: FIFA Museum
There was much reluctance from the owners of Bramall Lane to see the pitch used for football. They did not relent until a charity match between Sheffield and Hallam was suggested in late 1862. The ground was used by Sheffield for its more important fixtures but relations with the owners remained strained. They collapsed altogether in 1875 when the club vowed never to play at the ground again.
In 1921, Sheffield settled at the new Abbeydale Park ground. They moved to Hillsborough Park in 1988, then to Owlerton Stadium and Don Valley Stadium. In 1999, Richard Tims got involved with Sheffield FC when he was invited to a home game in Don Valley Stadium. He noted that the club was struggling in a way they were playing in a rented stadium. He took over the club and helped it secure its own ground, the Coach and Horses Stadium in Dronfield, Derbyshire.
The club bought the Coach & Horses ground in Dronfield in 2001, which was previously the home of Norton Woodseats F.C., a notable football team who reached the semi-finals of the FA Amateur Cup in 1939. It was the first time the club had owned its own ground. The ground has a capacity of just over 2,000 with 250 seats in the stand behind the southern goal.
In March 2019, it was revealed that Sheffield FC was in talks with the Sheffield Transport Sports Club (STSC) to move the club back to its home city after plans to relocate to the Olive Grove sports ground in the Heeley district of Sheffield fell through in 2016.
In March 2021, plans for the new stadium based at the STSC facility in the Meadowhead area of Sheffield were revealed. The proposed 4,000 person capacity stadium features a heritage centre celebrating the city’s role in football history.
More information: History of Soccer
You can do things really, really well but not win.
There's something greater than the result,
more lasting -a legacy.
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