Amateur Football Alliance
Encyclopedia
The Amateur Football Alliance is a County Football Association
County Football Association
The County Football Associations are the local governing bodies of association football in England. County FAs exist to govern all aspects of football in England...

 in England. It is unusual among County FAs in not being based around a particular geographical area. It was founded in 1907, as the Amateur Football Defence Foundation, quickly changed to Amateur Football Association, when The FA
The Football Association
The Football Association, also known as simply The FA, is the governing body of football in England, and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. It was formed in 1863, and is the oldest national football association...

 required all county associations to admit professional clubs. Its aim was, as the decline of amateurism at the highest levels of football set in, to protect and preserve the original amateur spirit. It prides itself on the skill and competitiveness of its leagues, and on its traditions of fair play and respect for opponents and match officials. Many leagues still maintain rules that require clubs to provide food and drink to their opponents and match officials after the match in a clubhouse or public house
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

.

Three current AFA clubs are former FA Cup
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...

 winners: Old Etonians
Old Etonians F.C.
The Old Etonians Football Club is an English football club whose players are taken from previous attendees of Eton College, in Eton, Berkshire.-History:...

 and Old Carthusians
Old Carthusians F.C.
Old Carthusians Football Club is an association football club whose players are former pupils of Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey, England...

, who currently play in the Arthurian League, and Clapham Rovers
Clapham Rovers F.C.
Clapham Rovers was from its foundation in 1869 a leading English sports organisation in the two dominant codes of football, association football and rugby union. It was a prominent club in the late 19th century but is now defunct...

. Past members of the AFA include Ipswich Town
Ipswich Town F.C.
Ipswich Town Football Club are an English professional football team based in Ipswich, Suffolk. As of 2011, they play in the Football League Championship, having last appeared in the Premier League in 2001–02....

, Barnet
Barnet F.C.
Barnet Football Club is an English football team from High Barnet, London, England, currently playing in Football League Two. The ground is in the town of Barnet within the London Borough of Barnet....

, Cambridge City
Cambridge City F.C.
Cambridge City Football Club is an English football club currently playing in the Southern League Premier Division.-History:The club was founded in 1908 Cambridge Town F.C., as Cambridge had not been granted city status at that point, and were committed to amateur sport...

, the Casuals
Casuals F.C.
Casuals F.C. were an amateur football club based in London, formed in 1878.They were founder members of the Isthmian League in 1905 and won the FA Amateur Cup in 1936....

 and the Corinthians. Sir Stanley Rous
Stanley Rous
Sir Stanley Ford Rous, CBE was the 6th President of FIFA, serving from 1961 to 1974. He also served as secretary of the Football Association from 1934 to 1962 and was an international referee.-Early Life:...

, who was president of FIFA
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...

, was also the president of the AFA. The AFA's flagship competition is the AFA Senior Cup which is contested by AFA-affiliated clubs on Saturday afternoons. Most of these clubs enter one of the three AFA-affiliated Saturday leagues, the Southern Amateur League
Southern Amateur Football League
The Southern Amateur League is an association football league affiliated to the Amateur Football Alliance . It is based in and around Greater London and caters for 11–a–side men's adult teams from clubs including former pupils' associations from schools and colleges, business house sports clubs...

, Amateur Football Combination
Amateur Football Combination
The Amateur Football Combination is a football league based in and around London and the Home Counties, and is believed to be the biggest adult football league in Europe.-History:...

 and the Arthurian League, the SAL having been founded in the same year as the AFA (1907) by more or less the same group of people.

The AFA's heartland is in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and the Home Counties
Home Counties
The home counties is a term which refers to the counties of South East England and the East of England which border London, but do not include the capital city itself...

, but it has member clubs throughout the nation.

External links

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