Plymouth

Plymouth Argyle have never featured in English football's top flight, and the honours list stops well short of a major cup: no FA Cup, no League Cup, the closest either brought being a run to the semi-finals, beaten by Watford in the FA Cup in 1983-84, then by Leicester City and Manchester City in the League Cup in 1964-65 and 1973-74. The most recent addition to that record came in 2022-23, when Argyle were crowned champions of League One.

The club traces back to 1886, when it was formed simply as Argyle. That original side folded eight years later under financial strain, and it took until 1897 for football to return under the banner of Argyle Athletic Club, a multi-sport outfit. Professionalism followed in 1903, along with the name Plymouth Argyle and entry into the Southern League and the Western League.

Home Park has staged their games ever since, in front of crowds that top out around 17,000. Argyle are the only club in the League to play at home purely in green, sharpened into a darker, specific shade known simply as Argyle green from the 2001-02 season onward. The nickname Pilgrims points further back still, to the Mayflower's departure from Plymouth for the New World.

Jack Leslie carries one of the club's more striking stories: picked for England in the 1920s while scoring freely from midfield, then quietly dropped from the squad before he ever took the field, in an era when a Black player winning a cap was unthinkable to those picking the side. The call never came again, but he stayed part of Argyle's history all the same, one of the club's leading scorers by the time he finished.

Exeter City remain the fixture that matters most. The Devon Derby carries a rivalry that owes nothing to league position and everything to the shared corner of the country the two clubs come from.