The story so far...
07 Feb 2010

This team were formed in 2006 as Towcester U10 Green, with Tony Benham and Mark Oddy as Manager & Coach. Most of the lads had never played competitive football before, but still managed a respectable finish to the season. The squad started off as George Oddy, George Skinner, Laurence Benham, Mikey Burman, Marc Button, Max Barnby, Ollie Swales, Ed & Brod Wise, Joe Pady and Ally Bain, and they were joined later in the season by Jake Dixon and Brandon Chan.

When the team moved up to 11-a-side in the 2007-2008 season, we lost Mikey and Laurence to the Whites, and Brod wasn't old enough to play 11-a-side, so Jordan Theed, Ryan Hammond, Hugh Hughes and Charlie Osborne-Brown were signed on to make the squad up to fourteen. Mark Oddy took over as Manager, with some small hindrence from Chris Button during training. They also acquired the rather distinctive orange, white and blue strip soon after the start of the season, coinciding with their first win of the year. It was a season where we struggled to score goals, and even though we conceded very few until the last couple of games, we finished at the bottom of a group of teams in the middle of the table: well above the 'relegation' places, but we never really challenged for the top spots.

With the end of U11 season, Player of the Season Jake Dixon and George Oddy were recruited by the Whites, and Charlie decided to move on, along with Manager Mark Oddy. Chris took over as manager, and Ian Barnby agreed to act as coach for the season. New trials were held and we were lucky to find James Chitty, Daniel Green and James Foster to add to the squad. Again, these boys were all new to organised football, but they have soon settled in as crucial members of the team. After eight games we had gained as many points as we did in the whole of the previous season, and have at last found where the opposition goal is. We're now looking up rather than down, and we'll see where the rest of this season takes us...

Chris B, 12/12/08

Well, the 2008-2009 season saw us finally end up in 5th place in the League, having won 10, drawn 1 and lost 9 of our matches. We had a dip in form after Xmas where we conceded too many goals and didn't show our best form, but we improved with the weather and finished the season strongly. Hugh Hughes and George Skinner were neck-and-neck for the top goal-scorer award right to the last day of the season; Hugh finally took the honours with 17, with George close behind on 16. Brandon Chan was voted Players' Player of the Year, George Skinner took the Manager's award, Joe Pady's tireless efforts in midfield were rewarded with the Club-Man of the Year Trophy, and James Foster recovered from his line-out catch in his first match to be Most Improved Player. Marc Button won the 'Goal of the Season' vote among the team for one of his long-range free-kicks against eventual champions Irthlingborough.

2009-2010

The players from the previous season all stayed together for the first time ever for the new season, and were joined by Tom Summers from Brackley to bring the total squad strength up to 15. It had proved very difficult to get any training sorted out over the summer, and we played our first match of the season without even having the benefit of a warm-up match. Form was poor, and we lost heavily in the first couple of games, but then we suddenly found our form and convincingly beat a good Drayton Grange team away from home. Unfortunately we than had to endure the usual early-season mauling in the Cup, having been drawn against yet another 'A-League' team, followed by a potentially tricky match away to the newly-formed Soccer-Stars team, who everyone was tipping to win the league at a canter. The boys put in an astonishing performance, and had anyone other than me been the Ref, they might have got a result. Confidence seemed to grow from there; Ed Wise, who was looking twice the player (and twice the size) that he was last year took over as captain, and the team went on a run of six victories in seven matches to move into the top four. Tom was proving to be a good signing, failing to score in only two of the first 12 league matches, and Jordan was also finding the goal on a regular basis. After 12 matches we had won 7 and lost 5, though one of those defeats could be put down to a sudden sickness bug that saw us put out a very depleted team one week for a game we would normally have expected to win. Could we get revenge... ?

The answer of course was "yes", and we won the return 7-0 in the final game of the season. We ended up; played 18, lost 6, drawn 1, won 11 to post our highest points total to date, and we ended up in 3rd place in the League, a very creditable performance from everyone.