A village football club founded by two lads in their 20s exactly one year ago this week is celebrating its first anniversary – and looking forward to its second season.
Heckington United was set up last June by Luis McGreskin, 22, and Josh Ogden, 23, who both felt their home village – near Sleaford – needed a team.
The pair had the idea because they wanted to create a greater sense of community for young people in and around Heckington.
And, after finishing third in their debut season in the Boston Workforce Unlimited Saturday League, they are now looking to kick on – and aiming for promotion next year.
Luis said: “We had been wanting to start a team for a while, since we’d been about 15 or 16. However, with being so young we couldn’t really start one. When Josh came back from Uni it was just sort of the perfect time.”
Talking about the club’s performance in their first season, Luis – a car salesman by profession – said: “We finished third out of ten, so not too bad overall. From a performance point of view it’s gone really well.”
Notable victories included a 10-0 win against Pointon Reserves in the last game of the season, while top scorer Owen Park bagged 24 goals over the season.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing for the newbies.
Luis said: “I ended up not playing that much, because the manager that we had appointed at the start of the season had a heart attack before the season began.
“So I went in as a co-manager alongside Kieran [Montgomery] just to try and make things a bit easier.”
Co-founder, Josh, explained how the club was able to find its home ground at Heckington Pavilion and Playing Field.
“My mum had just taken over there,” he said. “Obviously we still pay fees but…one of the toughest things about starting a football team is actually finding a ground to play on so that just aligned perfectly.”
Now, after narrowly missing out on promotion this year, United are hoping to go even further in their next campaign.
Luis said: “We had the ambition of hopefully getting promoted out of the bottom division. However, with a few points dropped here and a few bad calls from officials, we narrowly missed out.”
Next season, though, that’s the aim – as well as to keep Heckington enjoying its new football team.
