Full name | Ely City Football Club |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | The Robins |
Founded | 1885 |
Ground | The Unwin Ground, Ely |
Capacity | 1,500 (150 seated) |
Chairman | Robert Button |
Manager | Brady Stone |
League | Eastern Counties League Premier Division |
2015–16 | Eastern Counties League Division One, 2nd (promoted) |
Ely City Football Club is a football club based in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. They are currently members of the Eastern Counties League Premier Division and play at the Unwin Sports Ground.
Ely City was established in 1885 by members of Ely St. Etheldreda Football and Cricket Club and are the oldest senior football club in Cambridgeshire. They joined the Cambridgeshire League in 1901, but withdrew during the 1902–03 season due to a dispute over fees. However, they rejoined the league the following season. The club absorbed Ely Albion in 1908. The club won both Cambridgeshire Senior Cups in 1948. In 1951 they left the Cambridgeshire League to join the Premier Division of the Peterborough & District League. They were league champions in 1955–56, and in 1956–57 the club reached the first round of the FA Cup after winning five qualifying rounds. Drawn at home to Torquay United, they lost 6–2 in front of a crowd of 4,223. The season also saw them finish as runners-up in the league, a feat they repeated the following season.
In 1958 Ely joined Division One South of the Central Alliance, where they played for two years before being elected to the Eastern Counties League. In 1967 former Northern Irish international Hugh Barr was appointed player-manager, leading the club to runners-up position in the league in 1968–69. They won the Cambridgeshire Invitation Cup in 1969–70 and the Eastern Counties League Cup in 1979–80, beating Lowestoft Town 4–2 on aggregate. When the league gained a second division in 1988, the club were placed in the Premier Division, but were relegated to Division One at the end of the 1988–89 season. They returned to the Premier Division after winning Division One in 1996–97 and were Premier Division runners-up the following season, but were relegated again at the end of the 1998–99 season, which had seen them finish bottom of the Premier Division.