Southport

In 1918, Southport Central was bought outright by the Vulcan Motor Company and renamed Southport Vulcan, the first club in the country to carry a sponsor's name into its own. It lasted until 1921, when the works badge was dropped, the "Central" cut away with it, and the club joined the Football League simply as Southport.

League status did not last forever. Three straight bottom-of-the-table finishes ended in 1978 with the club voted out at re-election, the last team ever removed from the League that way rather than through relegation. What followed was years of debt with no obvious way out, until Charlie Clapham, a local businessman, took the chairmanship in 1981 and steadied the finances. Under him the club even turned full-time professional in 2006, before stepping back to part-time football.

The best of it on the pitch came earlier: the Fourth Division title in 1972–73, the club's only Football League championship, followed by non-league honours in the Northern Premier League and Conference North once Southport had dropped out of the League pyramid altogether. The nearest brush with a major trophy came in the 1998 FA Trophy final, lost 1–0 to Cheltenham Town.

One name outlasts the rest in the records: Alan Spence, whose 98 Football League goals for Southport remain the club's scoring mark and earned him a place in the Hall of Fame in 2019. The club plays yellow and black, known to their own as the Sandgrounders, and the local needle is sharpest against Chorley and Tranmere Rovers.

Haig Avenue holds 6,008.