Full name | Bradford Park Avenue Association Football Club |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | The Avenue, BPA |
Founded | 1907 1984 (re-founded) |
Ground |
Horsfall Stadium Bradford, West Yorkshire |
Capacity | 3,500 (1,800 seated) |
Chairman | Dr John Dean |
Manager | Mark Bower |
League | National League North |
2015–16 | National League North, 14th |
Website | Club home page |
Bradford (Park Avenue) Association Football Club is an English football club based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Its name derived from the club's old stadium on Horton Park Avenue in Bradford (designed by Archibald Leitch), and was used to avoid confusion with Bradford City. However the club is traditionally known simply as Bradford, with the letters BFC adorning Leitch's grandstand.
The present club is a reincarnation of the club which played in the Football League from 1908 to 1970 before dropping to the Northern Premier League and going into liquidation in 1974. The new entity, established in 1987, is part of the National League North for the 2015–16 season and plays its home matches at the 3,500-capacity Horsfall Athletics Stadium. Bradford Park Avenue is one of 35 clubs to compete in all four top tiers of English football. The new club started life at what was then the thirteenth tier: Division Three of the West Riding County Amateur League.
The original club was formed in 1863 as the Bradford Football Club, playing rugby football, and achieved its first major success by winning the Yorkshire Cup in 1884. A member of the Rugby Football Union (RFU), Bradford FC became a founding member of the breakaway Northern Rugby Football Union (after an internal RFU dispute over broken-time payments) in 1895. Bradford won the championship in 1903–04 and the Challenge Cup in 1905–06.