Full name | Maidenhead United Football Club |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | The Magpies |
Founded | October 1870 |
Ground | York Road, Maidenhead |
Capacity | 3,250 (550 seated) |
Chairman | Peter Griffin |
Manager | Alan Devonshire |
League | National League South |
2015–16 | National League South, 7th |
Maidenhead United Football Club is a semi-professional English football club in Maidenhead, Berkshire. They currently play in the National League South, the sixth tier of English football.
The club was founded in 1870 and moved to their current ground at York Road the following year. The Football Association have acknowledged that it is the "oldest senior football ground continuously used by the same club".
The origins of senior football in Maidenhead can be traced back to October 1870 with the formation of Maidenhead Football Club, who subsequently played their first-ever fixture in December 1870 against Windsor Home Park on a site close to the River Thames. On 16 February 1871 the club played their first game on the York Road site against Marlow. The club were one of the original 15 entrants for the first-ever FA Cup competition in 1871–72. The following season they reached the last four before losing to Oxford University. Maidenhead reached the quarter-finals in the next two seasons, but in 1876 withdrew, returning the following season. They also entered the first-ever Berks & Bucks Cup competition in 1878 and the first FA Amateur Cup in 1893.
Maidenhead F.C. were founder members of the Southern League in 1894 but competing with the likes of Watford, Brentford, Fulham and Brighton proved too demanding and eventually they dropped into the West Berkshire League, which they won, and the Berks & Bucks League, in which they finished bottom. In 1904 Maidenhead joined the Great Western Suburban League.