History

Castlemead football club takes it's name from the housing development built by messrs. Wilson and Connolly from 2001 onwards.

Castlemead F.C. began with a handful of blokes taking a kick around on the grass, in-between waiting for the snagging assessors to visit, sometime in 2002 when the paint was still fresh on the walls (and floors) of the new development.

in 2005 Founder member Dave Lawless described the beginnings of the club, which we reproduce here:

"Castlemead FC was born in 2002 when I managed to persuade John McCarthy, Brenton Dyer, Simon McLeman and Pete Ashfield to a kick around in the park one Saturday morning.

After several weeks of the same, I had a conversation with Jeremy Andrews who also expressed an interest in getting involved and between us we managed to muster big enough interest to book the astroturf on a Thursday night in Tring. It was a success and we decided to try and build on it.

The real shot in the arm in the clubs growth happened thanks to a chance meeting of a neighbour previously unknown at the Castlemead Golden Jubilee street party. Gordon Mackintosh likes to do his business over a drink or ten and after a whole day doing business we forged a friendship built on the foundation that getting a group of residents socialising over a beer and playing football would be good for community spirit.

It was agreed that by making this a professional outfit i.e joining a league and not just having a kick about in the park or the astro, would give us a valid excuse to the wives of the club members that it was a neccessary and important contribution to benefit our local community.

Having meetings three or four times a week in Gordon's garden or the pub were compulsary and certainly something we wouldn't be doing if we didn't have to - after all the greater good of community spirit, the binding universal language of football and the takings of the xxxxxxx xxxxxxx (original pub sponsors name deleted) all had to be noted as worthy causes.

When it came time to look at joining a local league, Gordon thought we should really go for it in our presentation to the local FA. Now Castlemead is nothing if not a home and harbour to lots of aspirational and gifted young executives; careers in Sales, Marketing and Account management seemed to make 70% of the demographic on both the estate and within the team, so a strategy was drawn up and a pitch team was formed to create a presentation so professional that it would possibly have won an Olympic bid.

Myself, Chris Evans and Carl Oakes got suited and booted and went along to the league with a pre-rehearsed presentation showing them what a professional outfit we were including bank statements showing a healthy balance of over a grand before we'd even kicked a ball!

The presentation was so good we achieved our league status. In fact it was so good, that they bit our arms off. In reflection, they are used to teams who, without any disrespect meant, are scraping together a few players, using old kit, have no sponsors and struggling to find a pitch.

Presuming that our cash-rich status, our 2, yes 2, club sponsors and our brand new purpose built ground all meant that we were actually able to play football, meant that we were fast-tracked into a 6 division league in the 2nd highest division.

Thereafter we just got battered week in week out, we'd thought we'd be lucky to get into the league at all, but it appears you can be too professional and in hindsight we should have turned up like the others that night in tracksuits with no ground and no cash, we could have started Division 4 - as it is it's going to take us 3 years of hard work to get there!*
*target met end 2006 season

The club getting off the ground meant lots of time allocated for drinking, I mean meetings. This lasted for around a year until we were rumbled and the wives plotted a plan to all get pregnant and put and end to our fun, I mean meetings. For a while it appeared something had been put in the estates water system as one by one they fell pregnant.

So what we have today is a club that retains the vital spirit of the pioneers of 2002, a club used to playing out of it's league, a club that has made more people friends than any other single thing on an estate of 300 homes.

The football has at best been mediocre, the real success of CFC is what it has done off the pitch to bring people together. When you see one of our well attended social events with all the players, their wives/girlfriends and kids having fun, there's no result more flattering to the club than that"

Dave Lawless.

Please remember that this was written in 2005 and as such the references to rubbish football are not in keeping with todays high standards!