Ilkeston United Football Club was an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

club from

Ilkeston Ilkeston ( ) is a town located in the Borough of Erewash in Derbyshire, England, with a population of 40,953 at the 2021 census. Its major industries, coal mining, iron working and lace making/textiles, have now all but disappeared. Part of t ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

History

The earliest record of the club is from 1894, when it was an entrant to the Long Eaton Cup Competition, a competition put up by the Long Eaton Rangers for minor clubs. Originally the club played within the

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

region, joining the Notts Football Association in April 1894, before moving over to Derbyshire in 1899. United gained prominence after the demise of Ilkeston Town, and from the mid-1900s proved a local force. It reached the fourth qualifying round of the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in domestic Football in England, English football. First played during ...

in 1905–06, 1907–08, and 1909–10; in the last of those, the club visited

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, and held the Potters in a "particularly entertaining" game until the last 15 minutes, when the home side scored twice - goalkeeper Joe Webster "was responsible for the best example of custodianship I have seen for several years". It also won the Erewash section of the

Derbyshire Senior Cup The Derbyshire County FA Senior Cup is a local county football cup for teams based in the county of Derbyshire. Founded in 1883–1884, the first competition was won by Staveley, who beat Derby Midland 2–1 in the final. 1885–1886 saw Heeley ...

from 1903–04 to 1906–07 and the

Derbyshire Senior League Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south an ...

in 1907–08, ahead of the

Derby County Derby County Football Club () is a professional association football club in Derby, England. They compete in the EFL Championship, the second level of the English football league system. One of the 12 founder members of the English Football ...

reserve side. At the time the club's crowds were regularly reaching 4,000. The club nearly went out of existence in the late 1920s, and was only kept going by donations from chairman Fred Kenward, a butcher, who also secured the club admission to the

Midland League The Midland Football League, officially known as the Capelli Sport Midland Football League since January 2025 for sponsorship reasons, is an English football league that was founded in 2014 by the merger of the former Midland Alliance and Midl ...

in 1925; the club also reached the fourth qualifying round of the Cup one more time in 1926–27. However, after the 1927–28 season, following three seasons of struggling, the club failed re-election and dropped back into the Derbyshire Senior League; an immediate consequence was that in the 1928–29 season the club's gate receipts more than halved to just under £500 - only the transfer of George Robinson to

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...

, which earned the club £100, ensuring a positive balance. Kenward's death in 1931 robbed the club of its chief benefactor. Despite a successful 1931–32 season, which saw the club finish second in the Derbyshire League, the club went bust in July 1932, with four of the committee members being involved in starting up a short-lived phoenix club called simply Ilkeston.

Colours

The club's original colours were red and green stripes; by 1910 they were red and blue with white knickers. In at least 1913–14 they were white shirts with a red V, but the red and blue returned after the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. In 1926 the club bought a new set of plain red shirts thanks to the sale of

raffle A raffle is a gambling competition in which people obtain numbered tickets, each of which has the chance of winning a prize. At a set time, the winners are drawn at random from a container holding a copy of each number. The drawn tickets are che ...

tickets.

Ground

The club played at the Manor Ground, inherited from the earlier Ilkeston club.

Former players

External links

Derbyshire Senior League

References

{{reflist Defunct football clubs in Derbyshire Ilkeston 1894 establishments in England Association football clubs established in 1894 1928 disestablishments in England Association football clubs disestablished in 1928 Defunct football clubs in England