Altrincham

The Rigby Memorial Club began as a Sunday school side in 1891, and within two years had merged with a team called Grapplers to form Broadheath F.C., one of the founders of the Manchester League. The move to Pollitt's Field in 1903 brought the name Altrincham with it; in 1910 the club settled at Moss Lane, where it has played ever since.

The ground now holds 7,873, of whom 1,323 are seated — a figure briefly cut to 1,400 in November 2021 over a safety issue before being restored. The record attendance dates back further than any of the club's league honours: 10,275 turned out on 28 February 1925, not for Altrincham at all but for a schoolboys' match between Altrincham Boys and Sunderland Boys.

Altrincham won the FA Trophy twice, beating Leatherhead 3-1 in 1978 and Runcorn 1-0 in 1986, and took the National League title in successive seasons either side, 1980 and 1981. None of it matches the standing the FA Cup gave the club: no side that has never played in the Football League has beaten more Football League opponents in the competition, 17 in all. The best of those results came in the fourth round of 1985/86, away at Birmingham City, settled by a goal from John Rogers.

Jackie Swindells scored 252 goals for the club between 1965 and 1971, 82 of them in the 1965/66 season alone, a tally that still stands as the club record. Stuart Coburn kept goal across two spells, 1997 to 2002 and 2003 to 2016, and finished with more appearances than anyone else in the club's history. Phil Parkinson took charge in 2017 and left in 2025 having pushed Altrincham into the National League and, with it, full-time football for the first time.

Macclesfield Town has been the fixture that mattered most, the two clubs spending decades chasing the same titles in the same leagues. Altrincham has not added to its major honours since the Northern Premier League title of 2018, and a return to the Football League itself remains the one line missing from the record.