Sport
Winchester has an association football league and two recognised clubs, Winchester City F.C., the 2004 FA Vase winners who were founded in 1884 and has the motto "Many in Men, One in Spirit", currently play in the Wessex League and Winchester Castle F.C., who have played in the Hampshire League since 1971. Reading midfielder Brian Howard was born in Winchester, as was Doncaster Rovers and Wales international midfielder Brian Stock.
Winchester women also have successful sports teams with Winchester City Women FC currently playing in the Hampshire County League Division 1 and recently went through a league campaign unbeaten. The club caters for players of all ability and ages.
Winchester also has a rugby union team named Winchester RFC and a thriving athletics club called Winchester and District AC.
Winchester has a thriving successful Hockey Club, with ten men's and three ladies' teams catering to all ages and abilities.
The city has a growing roller hockey team which trains at River Park Leisure Centre.
Lawn bowls is played at several greens (the oldest being Hyde Abbey dating from 1812) during the summer months and at Riverside Indoor Bowling Club during the winter.
Winchester College invented and lent its name to Winchester College Football, played exclusively at the College and in some small African/South American communities.
Winchester Allstars were a 6-a-side football team, well known in Winchester.
Read more about this topic: Winchester
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)