Isthmian League Archive Site:
Ware Football Club has previously spent something in the region of forty years in the Isthmian League. A comprehensive record of the league’s results, tables and much more can be found here.
Results since 1892:
There are two documents, one giving all first team matches from the club’s founding in 1892 until the close of season 2024/25, the other listing known results for the reserve team. This side has also been occasionally referred to as the ‘A’ team.
More recently the role of a reserve side has been filled by an under-23 or under-21 team though there is currently no adult second team at the club. Results for the second team are still being researched and were last updated at 16:46 on 23rd May 2025.
First Team Results up to and including 2024/25
Reserve Results at the end of 2024/25
League Tables:
The attached documents list league tables from 1896/7 (our first season in league competition) until the close of season 2024/25.
There are two documents, one covering league tables involving the first team and one for reserve and youth sides. Note that the “Reserves” have sometimes been referred to as the ‘A’ team and more recently either as the under-21 or under-23 side.
The current season’s tables can be found on the relevant team section of this website.
Please note that some of the early tables have been taken from local papers of the time. They do not always prove out, mostly in terms of the goals for and against totals not being the same. For an extreme example of their unreliability check and compare the East Herts League tables for March and April 1926 in the Reserves and Youth Tables document.
Hopefully one day I will find the time to research individual results and eradicate those errors but for the moment please bear with me (Steve King).
Records:
This is a collection of miscellaneous records covering occupants of main positions at the club, highs, lows and fixture runs. Updated 16:30, November 24th 2024.
List of Players:
This section lists all players known to have played a first team game. Some friendly games may not be accounted for and records for the current season will only be added once the season has ended.
The list is based partly on club records maintained by various secretaries over the years and partly on research through local newspapers. In the latter case there is much dependence on the papers giving space to team line-ups or on the club supplying the necessary information. This did not always occur.
Consequently there are gaps, some of which may never be filled. Also, I have not been able to identify the playing positions for a number of players. If you spot an error of any kind do let me know. I hope any abbreviations used to identify playing positions are self explanatory but contact me if they are not.
The current record. For each player their family and first names are given followed by their normal playing position; the number of games they started and the number of additional appearances as a substitute; the number of goals they have scored; and lastly their debut date and opponents.
There are links here to both –
An alphabetical list of the players; and
A list of players in order of their debut for the first team.
Comments are welcome particularly if they can fill in gaps and point out any possible mistakes.
Last updated 13:27, 3rd May 2025.
Season by Season:
Appearances, scorers and a thumbnail historical perspective of each season the club has participated in.
This section of the archive has been built up from the local Hertfordshire Mercury and existing records within the club. However, these are not always complete either because the Mercury was devoting space to other items or the club itself failed to submit full reports. Sadly, as a result some seasons are as complete as they are ever likely to be since all reasonable research options have been exhausted. Goal scorers are however mostly complete.
Individual seasons are listed below with a link to a corresponding record. The format of the records was set up to aid my role as club historian by maintaining a growing record of appearances through each season. This should enable me to identify, for example, key stages or milestones in a player’s career with Ware. So you will not find a strict line up of players in their positions for each match just a simple record of who played.
A note on friendly matches. In the earliest years of the club even after leagues had been formed, friendly games continued to be part of the fixture programme. As such they were full games and players’ appearances in them counted as much as a competitive game. However, friendly fixtures did reduce in the inter war years as the number of clubs in leagues grew along with the range of cup competitions.
Even so these matches continued to be a part of the season’s games and we had not reached the current situation where a multitude of pre-season friendlies take place often with a large number of players being circulated off the substitutes bench. The use of such pre-season friendlies did not start until the 1960s and even then in smaller numbers than currently.
So we have some friendly games that I count towards a player’s total and others (more recent) that I don’t even if goals scored in pre-season matches are added to a player’s total. Determining the difference is not an exact science and I admit to it being a subjective decision in some ways.
Some friendly matches may thus appear with an X against the names of those who played or reference to them may be omitted entirely. These do not count towards appearance totals. A full list of our games and results can be found here.
Abandoned matches. It had been the habit to effectively remove these from the players’ records. I haven’t followed that policy. With substitutes allowed in competitive matches since 1966/7 (it had happened earlier in friendly matches) it is possible for a player to be injured as early as the first minute and have to be replaced. However that player still gets an appearance in the records.
To be consistent all players in abandoned games from whatever season now also get an appearance in the records linked to on this page. One match was abandoned in the 83rd minute, I’m not going to deny the players in that game a record of their appearance.
Similarly appearances and goals scored in games that are later abandoned or expunged from the records for other reasons were still registered in the heat of what at the time was seen as an official fixture. So they are also added to a player’s count in these records.
All this means that some of the club’s older records for appearances and goals have been amended upwards.
The season by season records. And now here are the individual seasons. Note that substitute appearances are shown against a blue background. Where no number is shown the blue indicates that the player was named as a substitute but I have no record of whether or not he came on.
Where possible, I am also aiming to accompany each season with contemporary press cuttings, adverts and pictures mostly from the Hertford Mercury to conjure a sense of the contemporary environment in which the club functioned.
Much of the research for this has been carried out at the British Library and Hertfordshire Archive and Local Studies in County Hall to both of whose staff I extend my thanks. I would also like to thank Ian Johnson, nephew of Horst Breiting, for the team photos and Horst’s mementos from the early 1950s.
It’s a personal matter but I prefer to view the sheets at a zoom level of 75% or 80%. That said, some of the images associated with each season, especially those that are copies of articles from the Mercury, might be better viewed at 100% or more. Unfortunately you have to set the zoom level yourself (blame Google, not me) from the field towards the top left of each screen.
An Intention to Play:
The history of Ware FC from 1892 to 1992.
This book was produced to celebrate the club’s centenary and does so with over fifty pages of text, league tables for the period and photgraphs from across the decades.
Copies are still available from the club at £2 plus postage.
