Civil Service FC
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| Full name | Civil Service Football Club |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1863 |
| Ground | Civil Service Sports Ground, Chiswick |
| Chairman | Jim Kellett |
| 1st XI Manager | Eddie Saunders |
| League | Southern Amateur League Senior Division 2 |
| 2015–16 | 10th (relegated), Southern Amateur League Senior Division 1 |
| Website | Club home page |
Civil Service Football Club is an English football club based in the city of London. The club originally played both association football and rugby football and the Civil Service, along with Blackheath F.C., is one of the two clubs that can claim to be a founder member of both The Football Association and the Rugby Football Union. However, the rugby club is now a distinct entity and appears to have been so since the late nineteenth century.
In 1863 the newly formed Civil Service club was playing football under both Association and Rugby rules and sources suggest that the club was similar to Clapham Rovers in that it was a single club playing both codes. At what point the Civil Service Rugby Club became a distinct entity from the Football Club (Association football) is unclear. Certainly, the histories published by the official Football and Rugby clubs respectively do not refer to a joint history past even 1863. However, the club was still a unified entity when it became a founding member of the Rugby Football Union in 1871, although notably it did not provide a member to the inaugural committee. However, in 1892 contemporary sources refer to Clapham Rovers as being unique in the respect that it played both codes, suggesting that the Civil Service had distinct teams by that point.
The club was one of the dozen founding sides of the Football Association on 26 October 1863, and lays claim to an earlier, but uncertain, date of origin. It was represented at the founder's meeting by Mr. Warne of the War Office, leading to the side often being identified as the War Office Club in historical accounts of the founding of the FA. Civil Service was also one of the fifteen entrants to the first ever FA Cup competition in 1871–72.
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