Kettering Town

At Latimer Park, the town's football club has played since losing its old ground.

There was a stretch when Kettering Town's name meant something beyond Northamptonshire: in 1976 they became the first English club to run out with a shirt sponsor, Kettering Tyres printed across the chest.

What they have won has mostly come at non-league level — Southern League titles stretched from the 1920s through to 2019, with a Conference North championship in 2007–08 sitting alongside them. Financial administration in 2011–12 cost the club two divisions at a stroke, the kind of setback that takes years to claw back from. Even so, the FA Cup has produced its moments, none louder than the 2024–25 First Round, when Kettering put out League One's Northampton Town 2–1, a proper giant-killing that gave the club's part-time squad a night few of them will forget.

None of it means more locally than the Northamptonshire Derby against Northampton Town, sharpened further by fixtures with AFC Rushden & Diamonds and Brackley Town — games where league position goes out of the window and pride does the deciding.