READY TO MAKE MORE MEMORIES

HEARD ABOUT the Non-League club that launched the careers of future English champions – including a three-time European Cup winner – and once saw legendary Hungarian forward Ferenc Puskas turn out for them?

- MATT BADCOCK

Meet South Liverpool FC, the Step 7 outfit trying to recapture past glories and push their way back up the Pyramid.

“We’re very proud of our history,” secretary Jim Stanway says. “Some of it is quite unique.”

Stanway has seen a lot since the 12-year-old him started watching the club back in 1968. But even before they became founder members of the Northern Premier League, the name South Liverpool was long famous in football.

Playing at their Holly Park home in Garston, South were a force in the 1930s, winning the Lancashire Combination and – following a 1939 win of the Welsh Cup – on the verge of election into the Football League before World War II. In all, they applied ten times without success.

As Stanway says, their history is quite unique. In 1949, they hosted the first match in the UK to be played under “modern” floodlights against a Nigerian touring side and, in 1967, 40-year-old Puskas drew a sell-out crowd of 10,000 to Holly Park for a fundraising friendly.

At Liverpool South Parkway Railway Station – the site of their old ground – there is a commemorative plaque to mark the great Hungarian’s appearance.

“Up until 1991 when we folded, we played a very high level of NonLeague football,” Stanway says.

Former names roll off the tongue. Jimmy Case went on to win the European Cup three times with Liverpool, as well as the UEFA Cup, four First Division titles, and a hat-trick of European Super Cups. John Aldridge was another to pull on the famous South shirt.

Railroaded