Which club has the best name in non-league football?

Action from Redcar Athletic v Tow Law Town

While media attention focuses on the exploits of the highly paid stars in the Premiership, footballers up and down the nation ply their craft every weekend for less or even no money, and in front of less fans and often no journalists to chronicle their efforts.

There is never a bad time to recognise and applaud those efforts but this seems an especially good one, as non league club chairmen deal with the effects of the premature end to their season and loss of income.

Many of those clubs still retain the kind of strong links to their local community, perhaps now long forgotten by EPL sides with their global marketing outreach, online stores in several languages and overseas supporters clubs.

Occasionally the club name harks back to that connection. This is why we set out to find out the more interesting non league club names in England and a little bit more about some of them.

Some of the more famous ones attract attention for their FA Cup or FA Vase exploits.

Irthlingborough Diamonds for example made it to the Vase semi-finals in in 1980-81 and 1983-84. Most people, even outside Lancashire, knew the name of Northwich Victoria, FA Trophy winners the same year as Irthlingborough reached the Vase semi final.

In this series, edited by Prost International football history correspondent Chris Stonadge and assisted by our team of writers, we will be looking through 32 of the more unusual names in non league football with the occasional feature on some of the clubs.

Why 32? Given the lack of any competitive football, we will draw them into a bracket to play each other, until we have two finalists.

At the start our team of writers will decide who wins each tie, but if the feature picks up enough steam, we might turn to internet voters for the outcomes.

The first side to be entered and featured on it will be announced tomorrow and feature a club from the north east.

If you have a suggestion of your own, please put it in the comments section below, telling us a little about the origins of the name.

If it beats any of our current list, we’ll enter it into the bracket and the competition for the best name in English non-league football.

Best non-league names articles