Hanworth Villa

Down the years at Rectory Meadow the games that stick are against Walton & Hersham and Chertsey Town, fixtures with enough needle behind them that no league position ever quite explains. Nobody bothered giving the meeting an official name; the rivalry did that work on its own.

Jimmy Connor put the club together in 1976, and the name on the chairman's office door now, James Connor, tells its own story of continuity — he played professionally for Millwall before taking on the running of the club his family started. Getting Rectory Meadow was not straightforward. Hanworth Villa spent much of the 1980s and into the 1990s moving between grounds before Dave Brown helped settle them there for good in 1997, a permanence the club had not known before.

The 2002–03 season stands apart: the Middlesex County League Premier Division title, the League Cup and the Alec Smith Cup all won in the same campaign. Two decades later came a different kind of statement season, the 2021–22 Combined Counties League Premier Division North title, taken without losing a single league match. In between, the FA Cup gave Hanworth Villa their moment of national exposure in 2011–12, a First Round Proper appearance ended by a 3-2 defeat to AFC Totton.

Simon Haughney has managed since November 2019, and this year his side beat Westfield 2-0 in the Isthmian League South Central Division play-off final to go up to Step 3. That promotion puts Hanworth Villa into the Southern League Premier Division South this season, the highest level the club has reached.