Hayes & Yeading United Football Club was created in May 2007 when the two clubs respective Chairmen, Derek Goodall and Phillip Spurden agreed that the only way either club could continue, long term, at the level they were playing would be to join forces as a single entity. Hayes FC was founded in 1909 when Eileen Shackle, the teenage daughter of a wealthy land agent, encouraged the local youngsters to form a football team. The team was originally known as Botwell Mission, after the mission church that was built in memory of her grandfather, and that still stands today as part of the Hayes Library in Golden Crescent. Yeading FC was also founded with youth in mind beginning their existence in 1960 as Yeading Youth Club, started by brothers Ray and Carl Gritt. While the sixties were pretty lean for Hayes FC, the newly formed Yeading FC were starting to get noticed at a junior level, having moved to Warren Park in 1965. As Uxbridge League Premier Division Runners up in 1967 Yeading moved into the newly formed West Middlesex Combination Premier Division and having notched a league and couple double that same season joined the South West Middlesex League. That first season (1968/69) Yeading won the West Drayton Charity Cup, and more prestigiously the Middlesex Junior Cup for the first time while also securing the Division One Title. Further promotion led to back-to-back South West Middlesex Premier Division titles and in 1970/71 Yeading also won both the Middlesex Junior and Intermediate Cups. During the 1970s they won the latter five times and the former twice. In 1971/72 Hayes FC were elected to the Isthmian League while Yeading FC earned promotion to the Middlesex League seeing Championship success in their first season (1971/72), scoring a record 122 goals in the process. Season 1972/73 saw Yeading sweep all four trophies - League and Cup - in the Middlesex League while over at Church Road Hayes FC hit the headlines with an FA Cup first round defeat of Football League side Bristol Rovers before taking Reading to a second round replay. The eighties saw Hayes FC maintain their Isthmian League status year on year without much danger of movement up or down while Yeading FC had started their climb upwards at no mean rate of knots. The Ding moved from the Middlesex League to the Spartan League going unbeaten through 1986/87 and earning promotion to the Isthmian League Division Two South in the process. The turn of the decade saw Yeading hit the national headlines when they became the first Middlesex side to lift the FA Vase, having drawn at Wembley, they travelled to Leeds’ Elland Road where they secured a 1-0 victory over Bridlington Town. Season 1992/93 saw Yeading’s meteoric rise through the leagues reach the Isthmian Premier, the first time neighbours Hayes FC and Yeading FC were to become rivals. This rivalry was to last until 1996 when Hayes FC reached the pinnacle of non-league football by winning the Isthmian League championship by one goal in a nail-biting finale which also involved Enfield, Yeovil Town and Boreham Wood. The club maintained a presence at this level for six seasons, including finishing in 3rd place in 1998-9, before suffering relegation for the first time in 2002 at which time Yeading FC had dropped out of the Isthmian Premier so the renewal of rivalries would have to wait. |
|