This section is under development. Please check back for updates!

The Southern Amateur Football League (the SAL) was founded in 1907, the same year as the Amateur Football Alliance (the AFA) to which it is affiliated. Nowadays the SAL consists of thirty-three clubs based in the Greater London area. However, in years gone by the league reached from Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in the north, to the Sussex coast and Hampshire in the south.

In the golden era between the wars the league was graced by such sides as former League champions, FA Cup winners and UEFA Cup winners Ipswich Town, Hastings & St. Leonard's and Cambridge Town (now City). Since the end of World War II the make-up of the League has changed while the League continues to be one of the strongest amateur competitions in the country, a fact confirmed by the representative team's victory in the FA National League System Cup in 2008.

In the beginning

... as they say, organised football in England was dominated by public school teams in the south-east of England. These teams were strictly amateur and frowned upon any form of payment for the playing of sport. As the game developed in the north and midlands of the country more and more clubs found that their players could not afford the luxury of time off work to play football, let alone train, and began to compensate them financially for their efforts.

By the 1880s the balance of power in football had shifted northwards as more and more clubs in the industrial heartlands of England began paying not just local players, but players they had brought south from Scotland to represent them. The old boys of the south were less than impressed by this and the Football League, founded in 1888, consisted of clubs entirely based in the north or midlands.

The tension between the professionals and the amateurs continued to mount. At the turn of the 20th century professionalism had spread to London and a number of amateur clubs began to feel that the game was being run by their county associations for the benefit of professional outfits without due thought given to themselves. With this in mind a breakaway took place in 1907, now known as 'The Great Split'. The split saw a number of clubs and county FAs leave the Football Association to join the newly formed 'Amateur Football Defence Federation' which later became the Amateur Football Association and finally the Amateur Football Alliance.

Defending amateur football

Contrary to popular misconception, the split was not along the lines of the rugby split which took place at the end of the 19th century - which centred around well-to-do southern clubs refusing to condone the payments made to less well off players in the north - it was a protest against what many amateur players, clubs and counties felt was a lack of representation for the amateur game within the Football Association. Interesting parallels can be drawn with the game in the early 21st century when the professional game seems once again to be moving with ever increasing speed away from its roots in the amateur game. Indeed, while the F.A. banned its member clubs from playing matches against AFA sides, the AFA was entirely happy for its clubs to play against professionals.

With the founding of the AFA several county FAs signed up including most of the home counties FAs plus a number from the midland counties. London initially joined but later backed down to return to the FA fold. Remants of these actions are still visible in the footballing setup of today as the AFA still runs county divisional cups for Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent (albeit merged into Essex/Middlesex and Surrey/Kent since 2004) which began life as separate county cups. The make-up of AFA membership also reflects the strong bias towards the London area with a small number of midlands teams still entering the AFA Senior Cup each season. Finally, anyone looking closely at county affiliation amongst those professional clubs existing since that time in London a necessity between 1907-14 as the other counties had joined the AFA.

Founding of the Southern Amateur League

At the same time that the AFA was founded the same administrators took it upon themselves to create the Southern Amateur League to cater for the Alliance's top clubs. The League has continued to this day as the AFA's strongest League, albeit with far more competition in latter years from the Amateur Football Combination than previously experienced from the Old Boys League, Southern Olympian League, London Financial FA and Nemean Amateur League, all of which - in one way or another - have contributed to the new competition.

Seventeen founder members lined-up for the inaugural 1907-1908 season:

Section "A" Casuals Civil Service Croydon Ealing Association Eastbourne Ipswich Town New Crusaders Richmond Association Townley Park

Section "B" Alleyn Old Boys Bowes Park Crouch End Vampires Cheshunt Hampstead Lee Reigate Priory Weybridge

Of these, three are current members, Alleyn Old Boys, Civil Service and Crouch End Vampires, although only Alleyn Old Boys can claim continuous membership with Civil Service spending a number of years in the Isthmian League after World War I while the Vampires were resurrected after the war as Mount View F.C. and played in the Middlesex County Amateur League before that League was effectively superceded by the Nemean League, by which time the Vampires had regained their famous moniker.

Of those founding seventeen New Crusaders made the biggest splash by winning the first four championships and then adding one more in 1913 before leaving to join the Isthmian League. They were followed by Civil Service - winners of the other two pre-war titles - as well as Casuals and Tunbridge Wells. Amongst them the former three had won seven league titles and four AFA Senior Cups (Oxford and Ealing Association having also won the Senior Cup in that period). One club which had yet to make any real impact was Ipswich Town who spend the next 2 decades fighting it out with Cambridge Town who won Section "B" at the first attempt in 1913-1914.

Map of SAL clubs 1907-1914

Between the wars

The League was quick to restart after the war and welcomed a host of new clubs in 1919 to replace those which had not returned from 1914. Amongst them were Merton who it can only be said seem to thrive on adversity as both of their Senior championships have come in the seasons immediately after the two world wars. Their 1919-1920 victory, however, is a rather bizarre one as the season finished with Eastbourne and Cambridge Town having not played each other. With the points on offer either side could have nicked the title but for whatever reason the games remained unplayed and Merton celebrated the title in their first season of membership.

The rest of the inter-war period belonged to East Anglia and Sussex and the battle between Ipswich, Cambridge, Hastings and Eastbourne. Cambridge came out on top with five championships before resigning in 1935 to join the Spartan League. Ipswich left the same year with four titles under their belt to become founder members of the Eastern Counties League. By 1937 they were Southern League champions by 1938 they had become a Football League club. In Sussex, Eastbourne managed two league titles and Hastings four, both remaining until after World War II.

In general the League covered a far wider area than it does today. Three sides each hailed from Sussex and East Anglia (East Grinstead and Harwich & Parkeston in addition to those mentioned above) and two more from Hampshire in H.M.S. Excellent (Portsmouth) and Thornycrofts (Basingstoke). Trips to the south coast were often organised in tandem and the last train back from the coast was frequently filled by SAL players having enjoyed the hospitality of their hosts.

In passing on the likes of Ipswich and Cambridge the League lost some of its strongest sides but clearly filled an effective role in feeding the more senior amateur leagues in the south-east. They were replaced as often as not by banks and old boys clubs and smaller private clubs who played on open sports grounds rather than enclosed arenas forming the League we know today. During the same period two more founder members (as well as Ipswich) moved on. Cheshunt moved to pastures new in 1921 along with Hamptead although the latter may well have merged with Richmond Association (also a founder member) as the Hampstead & Richmond club which also called Old Deer Park a home, but that club left just one year later.