History

South Manchester and Cheshire Football League (SMCCFL) was formed in 1999, by six church football teams. This followed a season or two when these football teams had played ‘friendly’ matches, whilst some of the teams had entered the National Christian Cup (as it is now called). In 1999, some of the managers from these church teams realised that there would be a benefit of establishing a league - one of these managers was the current SMCCFL Chairman Peter Riley who was manager of the Tytherington Family Worship team. Of those six original teams, only two remain – Macclesfield Team Parish and Holy Trinity Hurdsfield.

The fledgling league remained small, with just six teams, for the first three seasons. Holy Trinity Platt, were Champions for the first two seasons, before they moved onto another league in search of more regular and more competitive football. Unfortunately, the club later folded, but was reformed some years after and rejoined SMCCFL in 2006. HTP were replaced by Warrington Boys Brigade, who went on to win the SMCCFL Championship in their first season (2002).

The league expanded to 8 teams for the 2002/03 season and one of those new teams from Bolton Pentecostal Church were Champions for that and the following season. BPC were the first team to join SMCCFL from outside the South Manchester and Cheshire area. BPC subsequently played in SMCCFL as Fusion FC until they left the league. In 2003 the league expanded to 10 teams and in that 2003/04 season the SMCCFL Cup was played for the first time – it has proven to be a very popular and successful ‘second’ competition for SMCCFL, especially as the League has expanded in number of teams. Hill Cliffe Baptist beat Tytherington Family Worship in the first final. For the 2004/05 season a split league format was tried for the first time, and the same format was used in the 2005/06 season when there were 12 teams. Hill Cliffe Baptist won their one and only League Championship in the 2004/05 season. In that season the first Burnley team joined SMCCFL, known then as Queensgate Pentecostal. After that first season of familiarisation, the Burnley team, soon known as Burnley Life Church FC, went on a three season domination of SMCCFL and were Champions in 2006, 07 and 08. They also enjoyed domination in the Cup, reaching six finals in a row and winning five in a row after losing their debut final to Hill Cliffe. In due course, Life Church FC expanded to three teams – Yellow, Blue and Green.

The league continued to gradually expand - for the 2006/07 it was 15 teams and then when the numbers reached 16 the following season, for the first time SMCCFL started a multi division format which has continued to the present day. Initially, two divisions of 8 teams in the 2006/07 season, but with subsequent rapid expansion by the 2011/12 season this had grown to four divisions of 8 teams each. The eight team divisions are considered to be the ideal for SMCCFL, with home and away matches against each other team giving 14 league fixtures per team. More recently, with a slight reduction in total number of teams, there have been three divisions with 8, 9 or 10 teams.

The period of dominance by the Burnley Life Church Yellow team was broken by Warrington Boys Brigade in 2009 who were also Champions in 2010, although in both seasons Burnley Yellow were close behind. In season 2010/11, Toft Tornados became Champions for the first time and were also 2011 Cup winners, with the Burnley Yellow six year dominance in the cup finally broken by Macclesfield Parish in the semi final. Toft Tornados retained their Championship for the following two seasons with Burnley Yellows a close second each time, but the Yellows had the compensation of resuming their dominance of the SMCCFL Cup in both those seasons. Burnley Life Church FC became Community Solutions North West FC in 2013 and then later Spacious Place FC, whilst their Yellow team were Champions and Cup Winners in 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, after which the team chose to disband. For season 2017/18 Ditton Athletic were Champions with St Michael’s Trinity winning the Cup and then for season 2018/19 King’s Church Manchester were Champions and Cup Winners.

For season 2011/12 we started a second knock-out competition known as the SMCCFL Trophy and in season 2015/16 we introduced the SMCCFL Charity Cup, which is a group stage then knock-out competition, for those teams wanting to play a few more competitive matches.

SMCCFL became an FA sanctioned league in the 2005/06 and from 2016/17 the League is sanctioned by Manchester County FA. As such, all clubs playing football in SMCCFL must be FA affiliated to their County FA.

July 2019