About Us

History
In June 2012 the two Wodson Park Football clubs (Senior and Youth) amalgamated to create today’s club. The joining together of these two much respected clubs means that we can now provide a clear player pathway within our club.

The club is the holder of the FA Charter Standard Award and we aim to provide local children both boys and girls with the opportunity to take part in football that is fun, progressive and run in a controlled safe environment. Our senior players also follow a player pathway which means that we able to progress players through the senior system into a very high standard of football.

We have great facilities at our two sites, Wodson Park Sports and Leisure Centre and Crouchfields.

Our senior section was founded in 1997 by John Murphy, with sides playing out of Wodson Park Sports and Leisure Centre in Ware. The teams progressed through leagues and divisions and in 2009 the club agreed a deal for the 1st team to ground share with their neighbours Ware FC on promotion to the first division of the Spartan South Midland Football League.

For the start of the 2012-2013 season the club undertook wholesale changes with the management and players of the first and reserve sides. In came Simon Riddle, David Stingemore and Deane Niner to look after the first team and Neil Kimsey and Tony Robinson for the reserves. With a new very much hands on chairman Lee Cook the new look senior section of the club now has direction and an air of calmness that has already filtered down to our new crop of young and talented players.

For the 2013-2014 season we moved back to our roots at Wodson Park Sports and Leisure Centre following the decision by Ware FC to terminate our ground share agreement to follow other interests! An enormous amount of work was done to ensure that we continue to play in the SSMFL and at step 6. The management and trustees of Wodson Park continued to be of great help and support along with the SSMFL who gave us valuable advice and direction at a difficult time for the club for which we were most grateful.

Our 2014-2015 season started very sluggishly and in August 2014 Simon Riddle stood down as first team manager by mutual consent. Kristian Munt returned to the club for his second stint as first team manager. In his first term Kristian took Wodson Park from the Herts Senior County League into Division two of the SSMFL and then won promotion to the first division. Kris was instrumental in the merging of the two Wodson clubs before moving on to our neighbours Ware FC.

The 2014-15 season was one of rebuilding and reshaping in readiness for the 2015-16 term. There was a lot of tinkering with player positions and availability didn’t always allow us to field our best sides. We set ourselves a mid-table finish and managed to achieve this by the end of the season. At the same time, it was disappointing that we had to withdraw our reserve team with just a month to go to the end of the season. This was a decision that we thought long and hard about before realising it was what was needed to move forward.

Our 2015-6 season was one in which our hard work begun to show. The regime head coach Rob Lloyd introduces paid dividends and we were pleased to finish in 6th position which was within our aims for the season. It was pleasing to see young players coming through and breaking into the first team. During the close season we finally saw the completion of our spectator stand and our official G Ground Grade.

Our 2016-7 season was one we will look back on as missed opportunities. We reached the final of the Hertfordshire Centenary Trophy where we lost 3-0 to London Lions and the final of the division 1 cup where we played Langford and lost to a late single goal. Our league campaign was hampered early on when we were decimated with injuries and with a late long unbeaten run we finished in 7th place on 70 points.

For the current 2017-8 season, we are ready with a squad containing most players from last season and all our coaching personnel too. We have set targets and now it’s time to achieve them.

Below our senior teams is a thriving youth section that is very much community based with a reputation for putting players first. We have a development squad for 5 and 6 year olds and then teams from U8 through to U17 playing in the Mid Herts Rural Minors League. We are working towards integrating the older youth teams in to the senior setup to give us a natural player pathway to senior football.