Rushall Olympic FC
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| Full name | Rushall Olympic Football Club |
|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Pics |
| Founded | 1951 |
| Ground | Dales Lane, Rushall Walsall |
| Capacity | 1,400 |
| Chairman | John Allen |
| Manager | Wayne Thomas |
| League | Northern Premier League Premier Division |
| 2016–17 | Northern Premier League Premier Division, 12th of 24 |
Rushall Olympic Football Club is an English football club based in Rushall, a former mining village now forming part of the northern suburbs of Walsall. The team plays in the Northern Premier League Premier Division.
Although football had been played in the village for at least 20 years previously, the earliest known reference to Rushall Olympic Football Club is in local newspaper reports on matches from the 1893–94 season. The club joined the Cannock & District League in 1895, finishing as runners-up in their first season and later joined the Junior (where they were champions in 1903–04), Amateur, Parks and Senior sections of the Walsall & District League.
During the inter-war years, the team won a number of local honours. At this time, the team comprised mainly local colliery workers and played on a field behind the Miners Arms pub in Rushall and changed in the pub itself. However, some time prior to the Second World War, the club disbanded.
In 1951, a group of local young men decided to re-form the club. They approached the proprietor of a local fish and chip shop for permission to use his premises as their headquarters and secured the use of Rowley Place as a home ground. The club joined the Walsall & District Amateur League, where the team won the Second Division championship in 1952–53, and later the First Division championship in 1955–56, after which they gained promotion to the Staffordshire County League (South), where they won the Second Division title at the first attempt.
Following promotion to the First Division, the club won four championship titles between 1960 and 1965. In 1975, in a bid to gain a higher league status, the club decided to move three miles away to the Aston University Sports Ground, just off the main A34 Walsall to Birmingham road. Meanwhile, the club obtained the lease on some land in Daw End, Rushall, and the new Dales Lane ground was officially opened on 14 August 1977.
The club were accepted into the West Midlands (Regional) League in 1978, and won the First Division title in 1980. The club enjoyed 14 seasons of moderate success in the Premier Division, with a highest finish of fifth place achieved in 1988–89. In 1994, the "Pics" became founder members of the new Midland Football Alliance. Although the late 1990s brought only mid-table performances in the league, the Pics did defeat the then-Southern League club Rocester at the Bescot Stadium – home of Walsall – in a penalty shoot-out to lift the Walsall Senior Cup in 2000.
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