The club was formed in 1977, and it was purely a junior club. It started life in the Torbay Pioneer League and Sandringham Road was our home pitch. During this time it was one of the biggest junior clubs in the area, and it won many titles and cups over its early years, including the Devon Youth Cup.
The first big decision the club made was to take a team into senior football, which happened for the start of the 1987-88, and saw us take a place in the Devon & Exeter League, and were placed in Senior Division Three, playing at Coach Road. Roy Holmes took his Under 18 side up into that division, and they were rewarded when they won the league title that season. We moved grounds once more in the 1990-91 season to Decoy Park, which was the season we also won the Wheaton Trophy. Promotions saw us climb into the Premier Division for the 1992-93 season, having again moved, this time to Homers Lane, Kingsteignton.
We spent eight seasons in the Premier Division, winning our first league title in the 1994-95 season, under manager’s Nigel Holmes and Roger Madge, who had taken over the reins from Roy Holmes at the start of that season. They remained in charge until the 1998-99 season, with Shaun Bartlett taking over, and the following season Shaun was joined by Phil Bayliss. The second league title was won in the 1999-00 season allowing us to take promotion to the Devon League. We won a number of cup competitions during this time in the Premier Division, including D & E Premier Division Cup, East Devon Senior Cup.
2000-01 was our first season in the Devon league, with manager Phil Bayliss being joined by Gary Taylor as his assistant. We finished this season as runners-up to title winners Willand Rovers, also we made it through to the semi-finals of the Devon Premier Cup. We spent seven seasons in the Devon League, with our lowest finish being 13th in 2005-06, up until that season we hadn’t been outside the top eight. Also in our time in this league we were runners-up in the Throgmorton Cup in the 2001-02 season. In the final ever season of the Devon league (2006-07), we did just enough to gain promotion to the newly formed South West Peninsula League, finishing that season in 12th place.
We started life in this newly formed league (which incorporated teams from the South Western League and Devon League’s) in the 2007-08 season. Under manager Phil Bayliss we finished that season in 14th place, but Phil was building a squad that he felt was good enough to contest for the league title. In the next season we finished in 3rd place, and then our dreams were realised when we won two consecutive titles, as well as winning the Thogmorton Cup (2009-10). After that first title win, Phil stepped down and was replaced by Steve Massey, but the club parted company with Steve a few months into the 2010-11 season, and he was replaced by player-manager Antony Lynch, who carried on the good work that Phil had put in place and we managed to retain the league title. Then in the 2011-12 season, we applied to the Western league, knowing that a top two finish was needed to take promotion, well it was achieved, but we did relinquish our title, with Bodmin Town coming out on top, but promotion was won. We did become the lowest ranked side to win the Devon St Lukes Bowl in the 2010-11 season, and we retained it last season, after beating Tiverton Town in both final wins.
So for the 2012-13 season, we will be playing football in the Western League Premier Division (Step 5 in the non-league pyramid), which is a great achievement for the club, which is still relatively young in age. Everyone at the club is looking forward to this new challenge, with Gaffer Antony Lynch once again leading the 1st Team……
As said previously we have had a number of grounds over our lifetime, starting with council owned pitches at Sandringham Park (During our time as a junior team), Coach Road and then Decoy Park. In 1992-93 we secured the use of Homers Lane in Kingsteignton (owned by local clay company WBB), and we built that ground up to Devon league standard, which included a small stand, enclosed playing surface and hard standing on three sides. But our big break came in 2003 when we were given the option by WBB to take on South Quarry, on the Torquay side of Newton Abbot, and after a lot of hard work and sweat by a huge number of volunteers, we started life at the newly named Homers Heath for the start of the 2005-06 season, with work on the ground and fabulous clubhouse on-going every season since then.
The 2nd Team started life in the Devon and Exeter League spending many seasons in this league, gaining promotion right through to the Premier Division. But, the club took the decision for the 2007-08 season to move the 2nds from the D & E League to the South Devon League. The 2nds have enjoyed a lot of success over the seasons, with league titles, Devon Senior (twice) and Intermediate Cups, all being won by them, with last season winning the prestigious Herald Cup. The 3rd Team started life in the South Devon league in 2003-04 season, and they had managed to win promotion every season, although they couldn’t achieve it last season (2011-12), and again the have also won many league titles, and cups over this period.
Our new ground at Homers Heath won the SWPL Premier Division best ground award in both 2007-08 and 2008-09, and then finished runners-up in both 2009-10 and 2010-11. The clubs match-day programme ‘The Bucks Review’ has also enjoyed success, winning the best programme award in the Devon League on four occasions, and in the SWPL Premier Division, they won that accolade in each of the five seasons we were in that league, and it also finished in sixth place in the final season (2004-05) of the renowned Wirral Programme Club awards, which had over 1100 entries that season.
The club continues to thrive both on and off the field of the play and this is due to the hard working ethics of all the volunteers within the club.
