BISHOPS CLEEVE | THE STAGE IS SET

120th Anniversary celebrations get underway on Saturday

The stage is set for Bishops Cleeve to kick off their 120th Anniversary celebrations on Saturday.

A team of former playing legends from the Pitching In Southern League Division One South club will take on a Manchester United Legends team that features Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup winners.

“It’s going to be a great day and a nice way to start a year of events to celebrate 120 years of our proud village club,” said Vice-Chairman, Clive Rawlings. “We’ve grown massively over the years and as well as our men’s team at Step 4, we’ve also got three other adult teams affiliated to us, plus two Women’s teams, a thriving youth set-up, disability, walking and veterans’ teams on top of the work we do around mental health.

“We’re a real community club and we hope to see a good turn-out from local people in the sunshine at the weekend. The match will be the centre piece, but we’ll also have mascots, competitions, food, drink and live music, a real day out for all of the family.”

Long-serving first-team manager, Paul Collicutt, will take charge of the Veterans team for Saturday’s game, which will be played on the newly-laid 3G surface at Kayte Lane.

“We’ve had a few training sessions in preparation,” he said. “The lads started off keen with plenty of running, but the pace gradually dropped down to walking as we’ve gone on and it’s ended up hobbling!

“In all seriousness, we’re really looking forward to it. I never thought we’d welcome a Manchester United team here!

“Hopefully everyone will enjoy the day. It’s going to be a nice occasion to start various events that we have in the pipeline over the next year, including a showpiece pre-season friendly against Cheltenham Town on July 4th, which we're looking forward to.

“Obviously last season was bitter-sweet. We secured our highest-ever finish [third at Step 4], with our best points tally, most goals scored and clean sheets at this level. We set some high standards throughout the campaign but came up just short in the play-off semi-final against Malvern Town.

“I think they edged the game overall but we had a great chance to make it 3-1 and that could have changed the whole complexion of the match.

“But in the end, it wasn’t meant to be; we can still be extremely proud of what we achieved and now we’re looking to build on it and go again in 2025/26.

“There are a lot of exciting things happening at the club and we’re determined to push on and see where it takes us with everyone continuing to give their all for the cause.”

The Manchester United Legends team will include the likes of Wes Brown, David May, Lee Martin, Danny Webber and Luke Chadwick, kick-off at Bishops Cleeve FC is at 2pm.

IMAGE: Bishops Cleeve FC

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