Est. 2004 · Camden Sunday Football League · Hackney Marshes
Sunday morning football for the alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford — and the friends they bring.
AFC Brasenose was founded in 2004 so that people who had played football together at Brasenose College, Oxford could carry on playing football together in London. Twenty-two seasons later we are still at it, every Sunday morning from September to May, on Hackney Marshes, in the Camden Sunday Football League.
In that time 342 different people have pulled on the black and gold. Eighteen of them have made a hundred appearances or more. One hundred and twenty-four played exactly once, which is also a perfectly respectable way to enter the record book.
We have won two divisions, won a cup, lost two other finals, been promoted five times, and lost 1–14 to a team called Athletico DFZ Orange. All of it is on this page. We are not going to pretend the last few seasons have gone well.
If you were at Brasenose, you qualify — and we would like to hear from you even if you have never met a single one of us. Especially then. Every matriculation year from 1997 to 2021 has turned out for this club at some point, and most of those people arrived knowing one person, or nobody at all.
There is no trial and no pre-season, and nobody will ask what standard you played at. Send a message, and we will tell you where to be on Sunday.
What you are joining: a WhatsApp group, a subs standing order, and a man with a spreadsheet who will record your appearance for ever. Goalkeepers especially welcome. Goalkeepers desperately welcome.
Twenty-one matches, three wins, and a goal difference of −88. Two of the three wins came against AFC Islington, who finished below us, which we intend to remember for a long time.
| Team | P | W | D | L | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Gun (Pub) FC Eagles | 14 | 13 | 1 | 0 | +61 | 40 |
| 2 | AC Soulseek FC 1st XI | 14 | 7 | 4 | 3 | +4 | 25 |
| 3 | CF Phoenix 1st XI | 14 | 7 | 2 | 5 | +7 | 23 |
| 4 | Footballini United 1st XI | 14 | 7 | 1 | 6 | +16 | 22 |
| 5 | AFC Camden 1st XI | 14 | 6 | 2 | 6 | +2 | 20 |
| 6 | Wildwood Rangers FC 1st XI | 14 | 4 | 2 | 8 | -16 | 14 |
| 7 | AFC Brasenose 1st XI | 14 | 3 | 0 | 11 | -40 | 9 |
| 8 | AFC Islington 1st XI | 14 | 2 | 2 | 10 | -34 | 8 |
League table as published by the Camden Sunday Football League on The FA Full-Time. Cup ties are not included in the table but are in the results list.
Goal difference, season by season. The tall gold bar is 2015–16, when everything worked. The long claret ones are more typical.
The league publishes tables back to 2017–18 only, so thirteen of the twenty-two finishes are confirmed — the early ones from the club's own first website, which survived where the league's records did not. For the rest we know which division we played in — the club's own records show that much — but not where we came.
Confirmed finishes from the Camden Sunday Football League's published tables on The FA Full-Time, which go back to 2017–18; the 2015–16 Division 2 title from the league's honours; 2014–15 from the league's own season preview, archived in the Wayback Machine, which had us bottom of an eight-team Division 2; and the 2004–05 Division 3 title from the league table of the time. Divisions for every season come from the club's match records, corroborated by the 2014–15 league handbook.
| Season | Division | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Form | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004–05 | Div 3 | 31 | 18 | 6 | 7 | 103 | 69 | +34 | Division 3 champions · promoted | |
| 2005–06 | Div 2 | 19 | 10 | 3 | 6 | 64 | 46 | +18 | Promoted to Div 1 | |
| 2006–07 | Div 1 | 23 | 8 | 1 | 14 | 49 | 55 | -6 | ||
| 2007–08 | Div 1 | 24 | 7 | 3 | 14 | 63 | 70 | -7 | ||
| 2008–09 | Div 1 | 29 | 13 | 3 | 13 | 63 | 75 | -12 | ||
| 2009–10 | Div 2 | 23 | 6 | 2 | 15 | 45 | 70 | -25 | ||
| 2010–11 | Div 2 | 24 | 10 | 2 | 12 | 47 | 79 | -32 | Promoted to Div 1 | |
| 2011–12 | Div 1 | 30 | 4 | 4 | 22 | 65 | 125 | -60 | ||
| 2012–13 | Div 2 | 26 | 5 | 3 | 18 | 55 | 90 | -35 | ||
| 2013–14 | Div 2 | 26 | 12 | 1 | 13 | 67 | 67 | +0 | ||
| 2014–15 | Div 2 | 28 | 8 | 5 | 15 | 57 | 83 | -26 | ||
| 2015–16 | Div 2 | 29 | 20 | 3 | 6 | 75 | 43 | +32 | Div 2 champions · Junior Cup | |
| 2016–17 | Div 1 | 25 | 6 | 0 | 19 | 45 | 91 | -46 | ||
| 2017–18 | Div 2 | 25 | 10 | 1 | 14 | 59 | 65 | -6 | ||
| 2018–19 | Div 2 | 30 | 15 | 7 | 8 | 73 | 54 | +19 | Promoted to Div 1 | |
| 2019–20 | Div 1 | 21 | 1 | 3 | 17 | 33 | 85 | -52 | ||
| 2020–21 | Div 2 | 24 | 4 | 3 | 17 | 33 | 86 | -53 | ||
| 2021–22 | Div 2 | 28 | 11 | 2 | 15 | 57 | 78 | -21 | ||
| 2022–23 | Div 2 | 23 | 9 | 4 | 10 | 66 | 61 | +5 | ||
| 2023–24 | Div 2 | 21 | 7 | 0 | 14 | 53 | 86 | -33 | ||
| 2024–25 | Div 2 | 28 | 4 | 2 | 22 | 41 | 137 | -96 | Twenty years since the first match | |
| 2025–26 | Div 2 | 21 | 3 | 0 | 18 | 21 | 109 | -88 |
All matches — league, cup and friendly — from the club's own records. Form pips read left to right: gold won, grey drawn, claret lost.
Kept continuously since the first match in September 2004, in a spreadsheet that has now reached version 23.
| Player | Apps | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rambaut Fairley | 336 |
| 2 | John Ditchburn | 274 |
| 3 | James Leviseur | 256 |
| 4 | Watson Pringle | 228 |
| 5 | Richard Davies | 199 |
| 6 | David Hollowday | 176 |
| 7 | Andy Norman | 169 |
| 8 | Simon Harker | 165 |
| 9 | Hal Stockley | 160 |
| 10 | David Stanton | 159 |
| 11 | Matt Houston | 134 |
| 12 | Nimrod Nehushtan | 134 |
| 13 | Jake Morgan | 133 |
| 14 | Harry Allport | 131 |
| 15 | Colum Elliott-Kelly | 130 |
| Player | Goals | Apps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | James Leviseur | 118 | 256 |
| 2 | Watson Pringle | 86 | 228 |
| 3 | John Springett | 80 | 103 |
| 4 | Colum Elliott-Kelly | 63 | 130 |
| 5 | Hal Stockley | 55 | 160 |
| 6 | John Ditchburn | 38 | 274 |
| 7 | Ben Claxton | 33 | 66 |
| 8 | Luke Saunders | 32 | 89 |
| 9 | David Hollowday | 31 | 176 |
| 10 | Ed Bonnell | 31 | 89 |
| 11 | Arthur Green | 29 | 89 |
| 12 | Richard Davies | 26 | 199 |
| 13 | Harry Allport | 24 | 131 |
| 14 | Tom Hurleston | 22 | 54 |
| 15 | Jonny Cattrall | 20 | 28 |
| Player | Assists | Apps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | James Leviseur | 134 | 256 |
| 2 | Watson Pringle | 43 | 228 |
| 3 | Colum Elliott-Kelly | 43 | 130 |
| 4 | Eugene Pooley | 31 | 97 |
| 5 | Simon Harker | 31 | 165 |
| 6 | John Springett | 30 | 103 |
| 7 | Hal Stockley | 29 | 160 |
| 8 | Ed Bonnell | 25 | 89 |
| 9 | Ben Claxton | 24 | 66 |
| 10 | Jake Morgan | 23 | 133 |
| 11 | Rambaut Fairley | 21 | 336 |
| 12 | David Matheson | 18 | 43 |
| 13 | David Hollowday | 17 | 176 |
| 14 | John Ditchburn | 16 | 274 |
| 15 | Amreet Kang | 15 | 48 |
Every one of the 558 matches, all 342 players season by season, every opponent we have ever met, and all 22 seasons in full.
Open the record book
Founded. First match on 5 September, at home to Oxford Arms in Division 3. Lost 0–3. Rambaut Fairley in goal, as he would be another 151 times.
Division 3 champions at the first attempt. Top of a twelve-team division on 45 points, far enough clear that the title was mathematically won with a game still to play. Also reached the Bill Price Trophy final, losing 4–1 to Reddot A in May.
Promoted again, out of Division 2 and into Division 1. Two promotions in two seasons.
President's Cup finalists. Five straight wins — Bertoli, MDM, Sir Robert Peel, Surreal Madrid and a 3–1 defeat of Phoenix in the semi-final — carried the club to its second cup final. It was held over to the start of the next season and played at Cockfosters on 6 September 2009, where Reddot Athletic won 5–2. The only photographs of the day are in the gallery.
Back up to Division 1.
The best season there has been. A second title — Division 2 champions, Junior Cup winners and President's Cup semi-finalists — W20 D3 L6, 75 goals scored, 43 conceded. Eight straight wins from September to November.
W15 D7 L8 and promoted to Division 1 for the fifth time in the club's history.
Twenty years since the first match. By then more than three hundred people had played for the club, and eighteen of them had passed a hundred appearances.
Twenty-second season completed. Seventh of eight in Division 2. Still here, which after twenty-two years is the point.
Honours as recorded by the Camden Sunday Football League. Promotions inferred from the division played in the following season.
| Opponent | P | W | D | L | F | A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AFC Shooters | 29 | 13 | 5 | 11 | 55 | 62 |
| Dinamo Dorigo | 25 | 12 | 5 | 8 | 71 | 62 |
| Brasenose College | 20 | 8 | 2 | 10 | 60 | 52 |
| Surreal Madrid A | 19 | 11 | 3 | 5 | 50 | 28 |
| Phoenix | 14 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 22 | 64 |
| AFC Camden | 13 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 26 | 44 |
| Enate FC | 12 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 21 | 29 |
| Cobden Athletic | 11 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 18 | 40 |
One hundred and thirteen players have come straight from the college, and every matriculation year from 1997 to 2021 is represented — twenty-five years without a gap. The 1999 intake alone has supplied eleven; 2002 nine; 1998 seven. People who arrived at Brasenose a decade apart still turn out in the same eleven.
We also play the college itself. Brasenose College is our third most-played opponent — twenty matches, eight wins — which is the only fixture where losing is genuinely fine.
Nine times in twenty-five years somebody has managed to get the whole squad standing still, facing the same way, at the same moment. Here they all are, oldest last.
