Clifton Association F.C.
UK association football club
Clifton Association Football Club, later known as Clifton Football Club, was a football club based in the Clifton area of Bristol in the late 19th century.
History
The club was founded in 1884, as Clifton Association, to avoid confusion with the rugby side Clifton Football Club; in its first couple of seasons, it relied heavily on Eton College players during the holidays, including most notably future England international Charles Wreford-Brown.
At the end of the 1880s the club was struggling with debts, but the club nevertheless resolved in 1890 to enter the FA Cup in the following season. Its best run was to the final qualifying round - equivalent of the third round today - in the 1891–92 FA Cup qualifying rounds; at that final stage the club lost 3–0 at home to Luton Town.
Clifton Association was a founder member of the Western League (then called the Bristol and District League) in 1892, and was instrumental in the creation of the Gloucestershire Cup competition in the 1887–88 season; indeed, Clifton was the first winner, beating Warmley in a final replay. Its second and final triumph in the competition came in 1889–90, a 5–0 win over St George in the final made all the more impressive as the game took place on St George's ground.
In 1893 the word Association was dropped from their name, which became Clifton. For the 1897–98 season, the Western League was split between professional and amateur sides, and Clifton was placed in the first division of the amateur section. However, after 1 win and 3 defeats in 4 matches, the club ran out of members and money, a considerable sum owing to the honorary secretary A. W. Francis, who had kept the club going. In December 1897 the club therefore disbanded.
“Clifton Association F.C.” enters the record as uK association football club. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clifton, Association and association can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5133174. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1890, 1891 and 1892.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clifton Association F.C.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.