A look into History 211

A LOOK INTO HISTORY TWO HUNDRED AND ELEVEN
LIVERSEDGE FC
We shall commence our story, not essentially with the club name Liversedge but where
they are actually situated. Cleckheaton is a mill town in West Yorkshire south of
Bradford and south west of Leeds in the Spen Valley.
Bearing in mind we are in Rugby League territory its not surprising that the football
club was founded in 1910 after the closure of the Rugby club. They started in the
Bradford League for three years and won it in 1920/21. After a short spell in the Spen
Valley League they were then founder members of the West Riding County Amateur
League right up to the early 1970’s when they decided to join the Yorkshire League in
1972/73.
Our Match Programme, without any price, is a flimsy fold over typewritten issue for
their game with the oldest football club in the World, Sheffield at their Clayborn Road
ground in Hightown Road, Cleckheaton on Saturday May 8 th 1982 and its significance is
that its one of the last matches in the Yorkshire League First Division, before it merged
with the Midland League to form the North East Counties League. Besides the team
line-ups on the back page the insert just has the short histories of Sheffield and
Liversedge.
This final Yorkshire League season of 1981/82 found Liversedge ending 15 th out of 16
with York Railway Institute below them. It is noticeable that the winners of Division
Two were Harrogate Town ! In their first NCEL North season they were 8 th of 14 in a
competition won by Scarborough Reserves with Harrogate Town fourth. After finishing
as runners up in NCEL Division 2 in 1988-89, they were promoted to NCEL Division One
but a lack of floodlights the following season saw them miss out on promotion to the
Premier Division, after again finishing runners up in Division 1. Nevertheless, very
steady progress was made and floodlights were installed with the Northern Premier
League top division eventually achieved in 2022/23. Unfortunately relegation came their
way to the North East Division.