Wearside League
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| Country | England |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1892 |
| Divisions | 1 |
| Number of teams | 20 |
| Level on pyramid | Level 11 |
| Feeder to | Northern League |
| Promotion to | Northern League Division Two |
| Relegation to | Durham Alliance Combination League |
| League cup(s) | Monkwearmouth Charity Cup Shipowners' Charity Cup League Challenge Cup |
| Current champions |
(2015-16) |
| Website | official |
 2015-16 Wearside League
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The Wearside Football League is a non-league football competition based in England. It consists of a single division which sits at step 7 (or level 11) of the National League System and is a feeder to the Northern League Division Two. Following the 2007–08 season, Whitehaven moved up to the Northern League, as did Newton Aycliffe in 2008–09, Ryhope Colliery Welfare in 2011-12 and Willington in 2012-13. The league has had a second division in the past but currently only operates with one. For the 2015–16 season, 20 clubs are competing in the league. The Wearside League is fed by the Durham Alliance Combination League.
Despite its name, the league covers a much larger area than just Wearside; for the 2015–16 season it includes clubs as far south as North Yorkshire and as far west as Cumbria.
The league also operates three cup competitions: the Monkwearmouth Charity Cup and the Shipowners' Charity Cup, both of which have been contested since the 1890s, and the League Challenge Cup, which came into being in the 1930s.
The Wearside League came into being in 1892 at the instigation of Charles Kirtley, secretary of Sunderland Swifts. In June 1892, a letter written by Kirtley was published in the Sunderland Daily Post and The Herald in which he stated that he had been asked by several club secretaries about the possibility of forming an organisation to play home-and-home matches, so as to find out which was the best amateur team. A similar letter was published in the Sunderland Daily Echo. At a meeting soon afterwards at the Central Coffee Tavern, eleven clubs agreed to form a league, which commenced playing later that year.
During the early years of the league most teams were extremely hard-up, and the league's archive records that one early club had no pitch but instead played on the sands by Sunderland Docks, and another had to play with an old rugby ball as they could not afford an association football ball. By the 20th century, however, the league was better off and was even able to organise matches to benefit local charities during World War I. After the Great War, the league was dominated for many years by colliery welfare teams – in the 1930s every league title was won by a pit team and the mining clubs continued to dominate right through to the 1970s, although an increasing number began to experience financial difficulties from the 1950s onwards due to shrinking workforces at the mines.
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