The Formation Of Badgers
07 Jan 2007

So a football club, its name, Hampton Badgers FC, yes you heard me right Badgers! Oh you must be named after the team on the TV show “Soccer AM” on Sky Sports you may think? Well think again, this is Hampton Badgers, the best, the original, not some poor excuse for a team that represents some staff from an over-priced subscription channel, with poor examples of commentating.

This is Hampton Badgers the brain-child of the three founder members Jamie Marler, Simon Hollis, and Martin Gardner. However the roots lie much deeper than just the founding of a football team. The causes are both vague, and random, as well as being wide spread throughout many personal who have at some stage represented the Badgers both on and off the pitch.

Now where can we begin with the explanations? One of the first explanations can be that of a number of the original players for Badgers stemmed from link with playing for the championship winning under 18’s team that represented Hampton & Richmond Borough under the guidance of Mike Hollis, father of extrovert goalkeeper and first chairman Simon. Mike of “Didi Fox Hamann” as he was fondly known due to his wife’s remark that he bore a resemblance to Dietmar Hamann, the tough-tackling German, and also for his fascination of foxes who lived in the garden of the house he was self-building for retirement. The influx of players from this team that had been established under the Hampton Youth name was due to H&RBFC not seeing it worthwhile to fund a reserve side that the older players could progress into. This ignorance spurred the departing players to have a group identity, H&RBFC had always had the nickname, The Beavers. Badgers seemed evenly random enough for this motley crew.

The name Badgers was loosely used by the group of friends on nights out drinking at various dead end drinking establishments, namely TC’s in Hampton Court, which has changed its name more times than a suicide bomber. And McCluskey’s which we ourselves have renamed just as frequently after a few bottles of Lambs and one of Goulbourn’s Martini cocktail bowls. This Badgers name for the group of drinkers was a mild humoured mickey take of the young groups of males in the local area, who decided they were in not gangs, but crews, based on sad examples of rap music. This was not a solid name for this group of friends, until one summer afternoon, and the help of one sole man that could put the Badgers name firmly in the hearts of its followers, step forward Mr Trevor Goulbourn. Nic Goulbourn was invited out for a summers day beer by his father Trevor, and ventured to the Kings Head, Hampton Court, opposite the notorious TC’s. Once in the Kings Head a discovery equal to that of Tutankamun’s tomb, the wonderfully refreshing Badger Brew!

And so a team of young men was born – the Hampton Badgers.