Sports and Leisure
Chesterfield is home to the Football League Two club Chesterfield F.C. who formerly played at the Recreation Ground (usually referred to as Saltergate). Chesterfield FC are known as the Spireites, after the Crooked Spire in the town. In 2005 plans were announced to build a new stadium on the old Dema Glass site north of the town in Whittington Moor. Construction of the new stadium, named the 'B2net Stadium' began in summer 2009 and was completed for the start of the 2010/2011 season. The B2net stadium became thr Proact stadium for the 2012-13 season due to the restructuring of the sponsoring company. The team's most notable achievement of recent years occurred in April 1997, when they reached the semi-final of the FA Cup, losing to Middlesbrough in a replay following a 3–3 draw at Old Trafford. It turned out to be one of the most controversial in recent history with Chesterfield having a goal not given when referee David Elleray decided the ball had not crossed the goal line from a Jonathan Howard shot, a decision which was later proved incorrect by video replays. Had the goal stood the club would have progressed to the final of the FA Cup for the first time in its history—a feat which no club in the third tier of the league has achieved. The team has a fierce rivalry with neighbouring town Mansfield. In 2006 Chesterfield FC beat Premiership heavyweights Manchester City and West Ham to move into the last 16 of the League Cup where they were narrowly beaten on penalties by Charlton Athletic. Despite their League Cup exploits, Chesterfield were relegated on the penultimate game of the season
Chesterfield Ladies FC have women and girls teams and are based at Queens Park Annexe, they play in the Sheffield & Hallamshire Girls County League.
Also Chesterfield has a competitive athletic team which competes regularly all over England. Chesterfield & District Athletic Club. Chesterfield Swimming Club is based at the Queens Park Sports Centre on Boythorpe Road.
Queen's Park also plays host to Chesterfield Cricket Club and is an outground of Derbyshire County Cricket Club
Chesterfield also has its own amateur Sunday football league that plays host to over 100 teams on a Sunday morning. The Chesterfield and District Sunday Football League consists of nine divisions and three cup competitions.
Chesterfield Spires RLFC are a Rugby League club formed in the town in 2003 and currently play in the RL Merit League
A speedway training track operated at Glasshouse Farm in the early 1950s.
Chesterfield also has a mildly successful Men's Hockey Team which typically competes in the Midland's Premier Hockey League. The side has typically been midtable or battled against relegation until its greatest success when it recruited Australian import striker Adam Clifford from Tasmania. During his two seasons Clifford scored over 50 goals and Chesterfield narrowly lost the league in the final weeks by a single point.
Chesterfield Rugby Union Football Club was initially formed in 1919 and played their first game in 1920.
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Famous quotes containing the words sports and, sports and/or leisure:
“Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,
The exuberant voices of music,
Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness
That makes beauty; the mind
Knows, grown adult.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his Neighbour.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)