Champions Church FC

Potted History: Potted History: After many years of talking about starting a new team, 2008/2009 was the season Champions Church FC was finally formed. We are proud to be a part of Champions Church which is a 350 strong organisation which is in the business of seeing the Black Country changed for the better through reaching people through many forms of outreach. The church opened its doors to the public to our new 850 seater building in January and the church is thriving with an average of over 350 people every Sunday.

The football team saw us take four lads from Amblecote FC and then build the rest of the team through people attending our church and people from our thriving youth ministry. The mix of Christians and non-Christians has been a major aspect of the success of the club. We started pre-season as soon as the 2007/8 finished and after a four month pre-season including thirteen friendlies, we were well prepared for life in the all new Third Division of WMCFL.

Our first season proved to be a massive success with us claiming the title relatively comfortably winning 17 out of the 18 league games, only slipping up when drawing the last game of the season which included a 92nd minute goal being disallowed!!! Our only defeat of the season came at the hands of Clarendon in the quarters of the League Cup. A battling performance saw us edged out 2-0 after we had beaten Division One St Matthew's 4-1 in the previous round. The team spirit has been the overwhelming reason for success with the lads going out and battling for each other every week whilst also having a good laugh off and on the pitch whilst finding and keeping that winning habit.

Our second season was always going to be more difficult stepping up to Division Two but the additions of Jim Wilkes, Joe Smith, Josh Ball and Dan Greatrex meant we only had promotion on our mind. Being unbeaten in the league was in one sense a problem for us as every team wanted to be that first team to beat us and after being unbeaten in our first ten making it 28 unbeaten and drawing just once that day finally came on the boggy Lion Farm pitch when we were well beaten 3-1 by Selly Oak. We only lost one of our last nine, winning seven of them which meant we went on to win Division Two by a comfortable seven points finishing the season of in style winning 9-1 and 11-3 to finish on 92 goals in 20 games. We exited the Cup in the first round losing convincingly to defending champions and League winners this year Clarendon 5-0.

This season saw us excel in the two key areas with Dan Geatrex, Rob Moody, Greg Timmington, Jim Wilkes and Lee Ralph in fantastic form as a backline and Shawn Devonport and Josh Ball scoring 61 league goals between them with Rion Mills chipping in with 6 goals and 22 assists. Were an exciting young team with that little bit of vital experience with the likes of Dave Oakley, Jim Wilkes and Lee Ralph and are hoping to make some kind of impression in Division One with a few quality additions and challenge the top four.

We look forward to Division One next year and are looking for a even better Cup run so hope we can avoid Clarendon this time!

Shawn Devonport - June 2010