Guildford Saints - A Short History
Guildford Saints F.C. has a proud tradition of helping develop young footballing talent around the Burpham and Merrow areas of Guildford since 1983. There are approximately 250 children registered with the club aged between 6 and 17 years of age.
The senior team has been running for several years with John Thornton at the helm. However in the 1999/2000 season dwindling squad numbers almost caused “The Saints” to fold. The same was true with a neighbouring club, St Peters Old Boys and following negotiations the two sides joined forces to form Guildford Saint Peters.
St Peter Old Boys FC is one of the 20 founder members of the Surrey and Hants Border League with its association having started in 1967. The club achieved varying success before its merger with Guildford Saints in the 2000/1 season, indeed it has the dubious claim of having played in all six divisions during a 21 year period, after which current Chairman Alan King hung up his boots with the club firmly rooted at the foot of division six in 1988.
From this lowly position things could only improve. Martin King (son of Alan) signed for the club in 1988 and continues to play today, meaning that the family have been present for all 39 seasons since the league was formed. There were of course some high points during the St Peters Old Boys era most notably:-
1977/78 - Runners up Division 4
1988/89 - Champions Division 6, Winners of Prince Albert Cup, and Runners up in the Surrey County Cup.
1989/90 - Champions Division 4
1995/96 - Runners up in the Hospital Cup
1996/97 - Runners up in the Hospital Cup
1998/99 – Runners up in the League Cup
Guildford Saints played some strong, attacking football over a 5 year spell with John Thornton in charge boasting a young team which saw them gain several promotions in small number of seasons.
The merger of the two original sides has seen steady progress. Having finished Runners up in Division 2 in their first season they subsequently gained promotion to the top flight. Since then Saints have had mixed success coming runners up to Spartak in their first season and can note the following successes:-
2000/01 - Runner up Division 2
2001/02 - Runners up Division 1 (Stoke Spartak having won the title)
2003/04 - Semi finalists in the Twyford Pollard Cup
2004/05 - Semi finalist in the Surrey County Cup
Once more due to dwindling squad numbers and poor performances the club nearly folded at the beginning of 2004/2005. However an injection of interest and some team bonding helped turn a terrible start to 2004/2005 into successful season from which the club has never looked back having finished mid table and losing in the Semi final of the County Cup.
Guildford Saints Season 2005-2006 - Managers View
With a few new signings and the return of some influential players for the first time in a number of years there was a certain amount of optimism surrounding the beginning of the season. However some missed chances, a few problems with holidays and maybe not the best managerial decisions, we found ourselves with only 4 points from the first 4 games.
The incredible team spirit built from the previous season and camaraderie second to none, helped us through the poor start. Indeed for the entire season the squad felt like we had something special. We were fortunate to have always had the help of the three Amigos - John Thornton, Alan King and Big Roger Gilder.
After a hard fought draw against Abbey on the fourth game of the season we knew if we could put in the hard work and retain the positive attitude our ability would show through and the results would take care of themselves. And so they did and with the aid of the trusty Onslow Rec pitch we proved a difficult team to play against. From that point until Christmas we picked up 22 points from a possible 24 to keep up with the run away leaders Stoke Spartak. It was after Christmas that we really dug in and worked as a team as we knew we were playing well and had a real chance of running the league close. Each member of the squad kept the commitment levels high and this provided us with pretty much an unchanged team each week. This I believe proved the key to our eventual success as we remained unbeaten from Christmas picking up 28 out of 30 points running in a total over the season of 84 goals and conceding just 23.
Oh when the Saints........................ | 
