Woolston Works F.C.
| Full name | Woolston Works Football Club |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1878 (as "Southampton Rangers") |
| Dissolved | 1889 |
| Ground | Antelope Ground, Southampton |
Woolston Works Football Club is a defunct football club formerly based at Woolston, Hampshire which was active from the late-1870s until 1889. The club pre-dates Southampton Football Club in whose early years the two clubs vied for dominance in Southampton.
The team was founded as "Southampton Rangers" in 1878 and comprised employees of the Oswald, Mordaunt & Co. shipyard in Woolston, which later became part of Vosper Thornycroft. Many of the workers had been recruited from the north of England and Scotland who had previously played football in their home towns. In their early days, the team played their home matches on Southampton Common before moving to Woolston Park.
Writing in 1936, William Pickford, who had helped found the Hampshire F.A. in 1887 before going on to become president of The Football Association, said:
The effect of this galaxy of Scotsmen on the game in Hampshire was electifying. Up to then, few local people knew anything about the fine points of the game, and the public troubled little about it as a spectacle. The opening of the Woolston Shipyard turned Southampton into an association (football) hot-bed, and it woke up with a start.
In 1886, Woolston Works entered the South Hants & Dorset Senior Cup, defeating the Portsmouth Sunflowers 6–1 in the First Round on 9 October 1886. The Sunflowers were run by Canon Norman Pares, who had played for the Old Etonians when they won the 1879 FA Cup Final. The Works team progressed to the final where they defeated Wimborne Town with a single goal. The umpire for the final was M. P. Betts who won the very first FA Cup Final with the Wanderers in 1872.
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