Pontefract Collieries F.C.
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| Full name | Pontefract Collieries Football Club |
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| Nickname(s) | The Colls |
| Founded | 1958 (Estimated) |
| Ground | Harratt Nissan Stadium Pontefract West Yorkshire |
| Capacity | 1,200 (300 seats) |
| Manager | Craig Parry & Craig Rouse |
| League | Northern Counties East League Division One |
| 2015–16 | Northern Counties East League Premier Division, 20th (relegated) |
Pontefract Collieries Football Club are a football club based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England. The team plays in the Northern Counties East League Division One. Pontefract Collieries is affiliated to the West Riding County Football Association and Castleford & District Football Association. They have historic local rivalries with neighbours Glasshoughton Welfare and Selby Town. In recent times, a rivalry with Hemsworth Miners Welfare also developed when the clubs played in the same division.
Pontefract is known to have had a football club as far back as the 1890s when a side, presumably composed mainly of soldiers, competed in the West Yorkshire League as Pontefract Garrison. Much of the history of the game in the town is still in need of further research, but it is known that a Pontefract Borough club reached the dizzy heights of the Yorkshire League in the late 1920s. They failed to finish the 1929–30 season, though. But by 1935, a club called Tanshelf Gems managed to acquire a ground on Ackworth Road, moved there, and became Pontefract United.
United ruled the roost in local football before the war, but when hostilities ended in Europe, they were rekindled in the town with the appearance of a Pontefract Collieries side, who by the late 1950s had gained slight bragging rights over their town rivals, both playing in the West Yorkshire League.
But in 1960 the old Collieries club became extinct, only for the name to return a couple of years later when United merged with a local youth side and adopted the name for themselves.
The new club quickly gained in stature and found considerable success in the West Yorkshire League, before joining the Yorkshire League in 1979. Progress on the field continued, culminating in a Yorkshire League Division Three Championship win in 1982. This was the last season of the old Yorkshire and Midland Leagues, which then combined to form the Northern Counties East League. The Colls were founder members of the new league, and have remained there to this day.
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