Rugby Football — Terrace Edition

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

The egg shaped ball dominates in Rugby, quite obviously, codified at the big old school in the town and rucks and mauls spreading all over the world.

Yet, the town of Rugby exists in a football nation and is not unlike most urban areas in having a significant football heritage.

Rugby Town FC has gone full circle from the United Counties League to the Southern League and back again via sojourns in the Birmingham and Midland Combinations, due to club’s location smack bang in the middle of the country.

©Tom Reed/Terrace Edition. Rugby Town FC.

The club has also changed names several times, going under the monikers of New Bilton Juniors, Valley Sports, VS Rugby, Rugby United and Rugby Town.

The VS Rugby years are perhaps most famous, with the Butlin Road club doing well in the FA Cup and giving Northampton Town, Leyton Orient and Bristol Rovers a match in the first and second rounds proper in the mid-late ‘80’s.

In 1983, VS Rugby had won the FA Vase at Wembley, seeing off Halesowen Town 1-0 under the twin towers.

It’s quite some indication of the peaks and troughs of English football that Rugby’s club has gone from a crack non-league outfit, which once hosted Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United at a packed Butlin Road to a team playing in front a modest smattering of fans against Northamptonshire village side Long Buckby.

The cavernous ground, with its six thousand plus capacity, was and is considered to be one of the best grounds below the National League and with its wide, sweeping terraces and solid stands behind each goal, should really be hosting football at a higher level.

Its main stand bears the letters VS written into the seating, which highlights the changes the club have gone through, but with the hulking great Butlin Road, down a quiet side street in the scholarly town, still in place.

Rugby Town are far too good for the level on the day, with a side of no little power that sweeps the young, game Long Buckby side away, via four goals in each half, to seal a stonking 8-0 win. That sort of scoreline always reads as a trouncing but Long Buckby, bottom of the UCL Premier League South had a good go at their top of the table opponents in all types of conceivable weather and it was a good advertisement for the League.

You do wonder why more Coventry City fans don’t come down here on their day off, just a few miles down the road, you can have a decent pint of Guinness while watching the game on the terraces and everything is well run in this enjoyable ground. They even share the same Sky Blue colours.

And as the rain pours down in the cold January night and the moon is full, you can imagine the club from the egg-chasing centre, going to to toe with the Cobblers down the road in the cup.

It just needs someone to go out in the street and corral a few more fans in. It’s a club with so much potential, but that’s probably been said before.

You can follow Tom on Twitter: @tomreedwriting

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