The penultimate stop on our whistle-stop tour around the London & South-East Regional League Premier Division is Sutton United whom we host on Sunday 30 August in a reversed fixture.
Sutton United FC was formed in 1898 through the merger of Sutton Association and Sutton Guild Rovers. They took up residence at their current main home venue in Gander Green Lane in August 1919. They began to become a ‘big club’ in non-League terms in the late 1950s and early 1960s, reaching the FA Amateur Cup Final at Wembley twice, losing to Wimbledon in 1963 and North Shields in 1969. In 1970 United reached the Fourth Round of the FA Cup, losing to Leeds United in front of a 14,000 crowd that remains the club’s record home attendance.
A third visit to Wembley, for the 1981 FA Trophy Final saw Sutton beaten by Bishop’s Stortford but after winning back-to-back Isthmian League titles United were promoted to what is now called the National League. In 1989, they knocked top-flight Coventry City out of the FA Cup at the Third Round Proper stage and were twice FA Trophy semi-finalists. United returned to the top tier of non-League football in 2015 and reached the Fifth Round Proper of the FA Cup in 2016-17, beating Leeds United along the way. Their last 16 tie ended in a 2-0 victory for Arsenal. In 2020-21, Sutton finished four points clear at the top of the National League to secure promotion to the Football League. In their first season as a member of ‘the 92’ Sutton just missed out on the play-offs and made a fourth visit to Wembley, in the Football League Trophy, but were beaten by Rotherham United. Subsequent seasons saw United drop down League Two and they were relegated in 2024.
United have a well-developed Women & Girls football pathway and have worked their way up to Tier Five. It would be foolish to bet against further progress in the long term.
United’s Women are based at the club’s training ground, the David Weir Leisure Centre in Carshalton. Unusually for clubs in the London & South-East Premier Division, they are playing on grass, which has forced our fixture against them on 30 August to be reversed and played at the RPS.
Named after a legendary local Paralympian, the David Weir Leisure Centre has an athletics track around the pitch and no ‘football furniture’. It’s approximately a 15 minute walk from St Helier railway station – head to Clapham Junction, change onto a train calling at Wimbledon, then change again for a train to St Helier. The ground-to-ground road journey is just under twenty miles via the Kingston by-pass and should take just under an hour.
There have been seven previous matches between Ashford Town (Middlesex) and Sutton United. The results are set out below.
| Season | Match Date | Opponents | H/A | Competition | Division / Stage | Res | GF | GA | Scorers | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | 04/09/2016 | Sutton United | H | Greater London Women's League | Division Two South | W | 3 | 1 | Belworthy | Cheatley | I Smith | ||
| 2016-17 | 23/04/2017 | Sutton United | A | Greater London Women's League | Division Two South | W | 14 | 1 | Neufville 5 | Richardson 4 | Belworthy 3 | James | Luzar |
| 2017-18 | 08/04/2018 | Sutton United | A | GLWL John Greenacre Memorial Trophy | Quarter Final | W | 3 | 2 | Neufville 3 | ||||
| 2018-19 | 21/10/2018 | Sutton United | H | Capital Women's Intermediate Cup | First Round | W | 11 | 1 | Cheatley 3 | French 2 | Carpenter | Johnson 3 | Neufville 2 |
| 2021-22 | 14/11/2021 | Sutton United | A | Women's FA Cup | First Round | W | 6 | 0 | Down | Farrell | Neufville | Cheatley 3 | |
| 2025-26 | 07/12/2025 | Sutton United | H | London & South East Women's League | Premier Division | L | 0 | 4 | |||||
| 2025-26 | 06/04/2026 | Sutton United | A | London & South East Women's League | Premier Division | W | 2 | 1 | Sucuoglu | Close | |||
