Club History

Reading YMCA FC were officially formed in 1896 when we joined the Reading Wednesday League. In this era many workers did not work on Wednesday afternoons and sport tended to be played midweek rather than weekends.

Nicknamed “The Young Men” the club joined the Reading Temperance League in 1911, a forerunner to the Reading & District League, which in 1989 became the Reading Saturday League and later the Thames Valley Premier League (TVPL).

The club spent much of the first half of the 20th century in the lower divisions with the occasional league success but 2 World Wars dominated the landscape and the YMCA organisation were heavily involved in the war effort with many YMCA players lost on the battle field.

It was during the 2nd World War that the man affectionately regarded as “Mr YMCA”, Wilf Fewtrell, joined the club starting a 60 year association with Reading YMCA FC. The 1950s and 1960s were a golden age for local football with 2 Saturday leagues in operation and crowds that would regularly number in the hundreds. Reading YMCA FC were one of the strongest teams of the era after gaining promotion to the top flight for the first time in 1959/60 and then going on to win our first title in 1960/61.

We enjoyed an unbroken run of 17 seasons in the top division before suffering relegation in the 1975/76 season which began a 27 year exile spent treading water in the lower tiers of the Reading Saturday League.

Under manager Lindsey Edwards the club returned to the top division in 2002/03 and then in 2009/10, with Mark Lemm in charge, we claimed our second Reading Saturday League title - almost 50 years since the first!

Shortly afterwards, the Young Men moved to their current home in Padworth after leading a nomadic existence for the previous 30 years.

This proceeded the most successful decade in the club’s history with managers Glenn Goudie and Karl Curtis winning 4 more league titles (including 3 consecutive triumphs), 3 BTC Senior Cups, 2 Maidenhead Norfolkian Cups and a Berks & Bucks Senior Cup win in 2014/15. This spell also included back-to-back unbeaten league seasons, a run of 69 unbeaten games between March 2016 to November 2019 - the longest unbeaten run in the entire football pyramid at the time. The team sadly folded after the run finished and the club had to rebuild around the remaining Reading YMCA Rapids players in TVPL Division One.

The following 2020/21 season saw the reformed 1st team storm to the Division 1 title, winning 19 of 20 games, under returning manager Mark Lemm and securing promotion back to the Premier Division. At the same time, the Rapids team were re-formed in Division 4 under boss Ryan Derman and won promotion in their first season!

After a season of consolidation in 2021/22, the team was rebuilt around an exciting crop of young players with current manager Lee Kitching taking charge shortly after the start of the season.

The team finished the league season in a very creditable 3rd place before shocking unbeaten Yateley Utd in the BTC Senior Cup with a 1-0 triumph at Reading FC’s SCL Stadium.

It was also a stunning 1st season for the Rapids under debutant manager and long serving player Jamie Froude who led the team to the Division 2 title and The Maidenhead Norfolkian Cup.

Along the way, the team set a new club record with 15 consecutive wins from the start of the season in a 22-match unbeaten run.