Having previously played on 'Sweetings Field', Stoke moved to our present home, the Victoria Ground, in March 1878 when they merged with the Stoke Victoria Cricket Club. Stoke's unbroken run of 118 years at the Victoria Ground is a British record for a league club being located at one ground. There had been some debate as to whether Scottish club Dumbarton held the record at their Boghead ground. However, about a year ago we received correspondence from the Dumbarton Programme editor who conformed that Stoke held the record.

Stoke's first truly competitive match came on 10th November 1883 when they played 'Manchester' at home in the 1st Qualifying Round of the FA Cup where they were beaten 2-1 by the visitors. Three years later Stoke recorded a 10-0 win over Welsh side Caernarfon Wanderers at the same stage of the same competition. For some reason though this victory is ignored by Stoke historian's, who still count the 10-3 victory against West Bromwich Albion in 1937 as being as "Record Victory"!

Stoke turned professional in 1885 and three years later in 1888 they were invited to be one of the twelve clubs that were to form the inaugural 'Football League' - a professional league which would see each side play each other home and away, with two points for a win and one for a draw, and which would provide the blueprint for the hundreds of other league set-ups worldwide.

Given the turbulent nature of Stoke's history it's hardly surprising that there should be controversy about when the club was originally formed. In recent years Wade Martin, probably the leading authority on the history of Stoke City, has expressed his belief, after much research, that the formation of the club as we know it today actually took place in 1868 and not in 1863 as we had led to believe for so long.

Wade has produced much evidence to back up his claims and it's not easy to mount an effective argument against his case. However, there are a few people who don't go along with his version of events and have produced some evidence of their own. It's not as persuasive as Wade's and perhaps we'd just like to believe it more? For their part the club can't seem to make up their minds. The two club shops sell merchandise bearing the date "1863", the club's own letterheads carry the same date, but the official matchday programme puts the clubs formation down as "1868"!?

For our part we prefer to go with the 1863 date. It's a date that we have grown up with and there's always that niggling doubt in our minds as to why more people, who would have been old enough to remember the clubs' origins, did not make a case for the date of 1868 in books and magazines from the turn of the century when 1863 was being put down as the year in which Stoke were formed? A flimsy reason for clinging so fiercely to a date for sure, but still reason enough for us. The rest of you will need to make up your own minds!

Stoke's introduction to league football was hardly spectacular as they managed to finish bottom of the table for the first two seasons, thus becoming the world's first recipients of the "wooden spoon". This poor showing led to them being voted out of the league in 1890, with their place being taken by Sunderland. However, an immediate championship success in the "Alliance" league saw Stoke voted back into the league after a one season absence when it was decided to expand the set-up from twelve to fourteen clubs.

Even given this second chance Stoke hardly set the footballing world alive with their achievements and though they improved slightly they never threatened to make any impact at the top of the table. After sixteen years more of loitering with intent to be relegated to the Second Division (formed in 1892) Stoke finally did just that in 1907. After one season of mid-table "respectability" in the Second Division a financial crisis saw Stoke resign their place in the Football League. It was a terrible affair with Stoke changing their minds when it was too late and thus condemning themselves to the relative obscurity of football in the Birmingham League and Southern League.

It took eight years of tireless work from Stoke officials and friends to get the club re-elected back into the Football League but when they did finally regain their place in 1915 they were thwarted by the outbreak of the Great War. It would not be until 1919 that Stoke would finally play again at League level, after an absence of 11 years!

Having found their way back into the big time Stoke wasted little time in getting back into the top division. In 1922, just three years after regaining league status, Stoke were promoted back to the First Division. Unfortunately, this rise back to prominence in the English game lasted just one disappointing season as Stoke suffered relegation at the first attempt. Worse was to follow and three years later Stoke found themselves dumped into the recently created Third Division (North). However, this massive set-back proved to be a thankfully temporary one.

In recognition of Stoke-on-Trent's newly bestowed status as a city, Stoke decided to add "City" to their name, thus becoming Stoke City. In their first season under this new name they raced away with the 3rd Division title at the first attempt and, after six seasons of progress back in Division Two, finally made it back into the 1st Division in 1933 when they finished as champions of the 2nd Division This time they were to stay there much longer.

If Stoke's progress in the top division was not spectacular then it was certainly steady. They established themselves as a respectable first division side, even finishing as high as 4th in 1936. With players such as Freddie Steele and the emerging Stanley Matthews were making quite a name for themselves and this fact was no better highlighted than when over 84,000 spectators turned up at Maine Road to see an FA Cup tie between Manchester City and Stoke City - a figure that still remains a record for an English game outside of Wembley Stadium! It was during this time that Stoke recorded their highest ever league win when they thrashed West Brom 10-3 in February and also their highest ever attendance at the Victoria Ground for the visit of Arsenal just six weeks later when 51,380 paid to watch.

With things going so well for Stoke the Second World War could not have come at a worse time. By the time the tragic conflict was resolved the players had been robbed of seven of the best years of their careers and while it was the same for every club and every player there was always that feeling that it had robbed Stoke of their best chance of success.

The end of the war saw the return of first class football and Stoke soon to be players in a human tragedy that is still remembered and commemorated to this day. On 9th March 1946 they travelled to play Bolton Wanderers in an FA Cup quarter-final match at Burnden Park. In the euphoria that followed the end of the war thousands flocked to watch football and this game attracted an official attendance of 65,419 - though the actual attendance may have been much, much higher than that. Thousands of fans scrambled over fences, and broke down gates to get in and in the inevitable crush that ensued over 500 were injured and 33 killed.

From the despair of that human tragedy soon followed another tale of misery for Stoke. In the 1946-47 league season, the first after the end of the war, they performed magnificently to put themselves within touching distance of the highest honour in English football, the First Division League Championship, and this despite losing the services of Stanley Matthews who settled his long-standing differences with the club by moving to Blackpool two-thirds of the way through the season. Needing only to win their last game at Sheffield United to be sure of the title Stoke went down 2-1 and thus handed the championship to Liverpool. Never again have Stoke come so close to lifting that ultimate prize and the sad truth is that we will probably never again come that close!

After that disappointment things didn't really get any better for Stoke. They had the distinction of often being able to put out a first eleven comprised entirely of Potteries born players but, commendable though that was, it was still small consolation for the six seasons of mid-table mediocrity and struggle that led, somewhat inevitably, to relegation in 1953.

Initially hopes were high that Stoke might make a quick return to the 1st Division but these were soon proved to be unfounded. Two relatively good seasons in 54-55 and 56-57 did little to disguise the fact that the club was sinking slowly, both in terms of league performance and stature. The threat of promotion receded and Stoke became, to all intents and purposes, a standard, run-of-the-mill 2nd Division side.

By the beginning of the 60s the situation at Stoke was looking very grim indeed. Relegation seemed more probable than promotion and apathy in the club was high, a sign of this being the fact that in the 1960-61 season local neighbours Port Vale actually recorded a higher average attendance than Stoke City! New manager Tony Waddington knew that he had to act and in a flash of inspirational brilliance he took the incredible step of re-signing Stanley Matthews from Blackpool in October 1961. At 46 years of age most thought that Stan was past it and that this was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Whether it was or it wasn't seemed to matter little to the footballing public of The Potteries who turned up in huge numbers to see the return of the prodigal son. A crowd of 35,974 packed into the Victoria Ground to see his return against Huddersfield Town (the previous home attendance had been 8,409!!!) and from that point Stoke never looked back.

Stoke's star was now in the ascendancy and there was a renewed purpose and direction at the club. Matthews' first season back saw them rise from the relegation zone to finish a creditable 8th. The 1962-63 season, Stoke's centenary year, saw even more progress though as The Potters survived a winter-ravaged campaign to clinch the 2nd Division Championship to book their return to the big time after a ten year absence. The fairy tale was complete when 48 year-old Stanley Matthews scored the goal that clinched promotion in the deciding 2-0 victory over Luton Town on an emotional May afternoon. Some publicity stunt!

Manager Tony Waddington set about building a team good enough to take on the best teams in the land and using his uncanny ability to attract ageing stars from other clubs he did just that. Stoke may not have set the First Division alight straightaway, but they gained a growing band of admirers for their style. In their first season back they managed to reach the Final of the fledgling League Cup but lost over two legs to Leicester City. Through the 60s Stoke continued to hold their own with all the big clubs and though major honours were never really threatened to materialise things carried on quite satisfactorily. Such was the prestige of the club that they even managed to sign Gordon Banks from Leicester City in 1967. Just one year after winning a World Cup winners medal with his country, Gordon turned down the chance to join Liverpool to come to the Victoria Ground instead!

By the start of the 70s Stoke were truly on the way to big things. In 1971 they reached the FA Cup semi-final for the 1899 and they came within a few seconds of reaching Wembley for the first time, only to be thwarted by an injury time equaliser by Lucky Arsenal who went on to win the replay. A year later Arsenal again inflicted misery on Stoke with another FA Cup semi-final replay win, but by then Stoke had already tasted glory and in the process captured their first major trophy in 109 years of trying. On 4th March 1972 they reached the final of the League Cup (playing eleven games and defeating the likes of Manchester United and West Ham on the way) where they met hot favourites Chelsea in front of the competitions first ever 100,000 attendance. Goals from Terry Conroy and George Eastham were enough to secure a 2-1 victory and set off wild celebrations never since witnessed in The Potteries.

That success in cup competition brought in more money and gave Tony Waddington the finances required to buy the players that would be needed to mount a challenge for the championship. Between 1973 and 1976 Stoke City were undoubtedly one of the best teams in England, playing a brand of entertaining, attacking football that won legions of admirers and looked set to finally bring home the biggest trophy of all. In the 1974-75 season Stoke seemed set to go all the way, but an incredible sequence of injuries, that saw four key first team players suffer broken legs, led to them missing out by just four points. Unbelievably, only two seasons after agonising failure Stoke had been relegated. A bad storm blew the roof of the old Butler Street Stands, it wasn't insured and Stoke had to start selling off players to bring in money. Tony Waddington lost his job as manager after 17 years with the club and things were in a state of terminal decline. It was as spectacular fall from grace as you could imagine and from that time till now Stoke City have never been quite the same.

Things looked desperate for Stoke as they slid close to the bottom of the Second Division and even suffered the ignominy of an FA Cup home defeat to non-league Blyth Spartans, however the arrival of Alan Durban as manager midway through the 1977-78 season brought about a dramatic reversal in the club's fortunes. A year later Stoke were promoted back to the First Division in third place (behind Crystal Palace and Brighton) after securing a last gasp win at Notts County on the final day of the season. They returned, heads held high, to rub shoulders once again with the best teams in the country, but this time there was never any question of being up challenging at the top. Save for a promising campaign in 1982-83 Stoke spent most of their time battling against the drop, pulling off more than one late escape act. The most memorable of these being a last day 4-0 against Wolves which saved Stoke from the drop when they had looked dead and buried at the turn of the year. As they celebrated that unlikely reprieve it is unlikely that anybody could have foreseen the misery that was awaiting us just around the corner.

Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it, so it would be wrong to brush quickly over the holocaust that was the 1984-85 season. Quite simply this was the worst season, statistically at least, in the club's history. Nothing went right for Stoke and their blend of young, inexperienced players and older pros just stumbled from one defeat to another. they did their best but their best just wasn't good enough and anything that could go wrong did go wrong. We were doomed by Christmas and we knew it. From a total of 46 league and cup games Stoke managed to win only THREE (though the 2-1 win over title-chasing Manchester United did provide one unforgettable moment in that bleak season) and managed to break almost every unwanted record going. They finished the season with just seventeen points and it seems inconceivable that that woeful total will ever be beaten!

The 1984-85 season looked like being the one that might start a full slide down the league table, following a route already taken by Wolves right down to the 4th Division. Surprisingly though new manager Mick Mills stopped the rot and on a severely limited budget managed to get the club back on its feet. It was a remarkable achievement but one which he simply failed to build on. Having steadied the boat and given everybody optimism for the future he lost his way and by 1989 the club was once again looking to be downwardly mobile.

When Mills was finally shown the door his successor Alan Ball promised better things but failed miserably to deliver. He failed to save the club from relegation, despite promises to the contrary, and in the Third Division (for only the second time in the club's history) things got no better. By the time the Board lost patience with him Alan Ball had helped Stoke City to 14th in the division - their lowest EVER league placing!

It was then that the club made an appointment which would put the club back on its feet and see a return to better times when Lou Macari was poached from neighbouring Birmingham City. In his first season in charge Macari took Stoke to the Third Division play-offs where they were unfortunately beaten by Stockport County but a year later there was no mistake. The omens in 1992-93 were good before a ball was even kicked; the formation of the Premier League meant that the Third Division became the Second Division and the record books showed that Stoke had been 2nd Division Champions in both 1932-33 and 1962-63, so the sequence was there to be followed. Sure enough the sequence was followed and Stoke enjoyed a memorable campaign, racing away with the title.

The return to the top half of the Football League was soon marred when Lou left to join his boyhood team Glasgow Celtic with his place being taken by the deeply unpopular Joe Jordan. However, Jordan's time at the Victoria Ground proved to be as short-lived as Macari's in Glasgow and a year after he left Lou was back at the Victoria Ground, much to the pleasure of an appreciative Stoke support.

Lou's return saw the the club reach the play-offs against all the odds in 1995-96 and it seemed that, once again, the club was on an upward curve. The play-offs may have ended with the disappointment of an unfortunate semi-final defeat to Leicester City, but supporters felt that there was something there to build on. Unfortunately, the last ever season at the Victoria Ground was not marked by an exciting push for promotion. Instead, an uninspired Stoke side plodded along - good occasionally, bad all too often - into a final mid-table position. The opinion of many supporters was that Lou had taken the team as far as he could and maybe Lou thought that too when he decided to step down towards the end of the season?

On 4th May 1997 Stoke City played their last ever game at the Victoria Ground, thus ending a tenure that began 119 years previously, the longest unbroken at a ground by any team in Britain. In the summer of 1997 the club moved to the new purpose built Britannia Stadium to begin a new era in the story of Stoke City Football Club. Chic Bates was a controversial choice as the new manager to lead us into this chapter of our history and the critics of this decision were proved terribly right when Stoke were relegated at the end of the 1997/98 season. It was a miserable season at the Britannia Stadium and supporters were left in no doubts as to the result of our decline. A poor (or lazy - call it what you like) managerial decision at a crucial juncture in the club's history, coupled with an inability to strengthen the squad at a time when top players were being sold to pay for the stadium (though the club denied they were doing this at the time). Relegation was a crushing blow but the writing had been on the wall long before our fate was sealed on the final day of the season against Manchester City.

Brian Little was an almost universally popular choice and few could believe we had attracted this very highly-rated manager as we sought to fight our way out of the Second Division. The few three months under Brian Little were terrific as The Potters soared to the top of the Second Division table but it was all built on sand. The board could not and would not allow the team to be properly strengthened and Brian Little proved to be not the manager we had all been hoping for. He floundered badly as Stoke's form nose-dived and we had to suffer some of the most humiliating defeats ever seen in Stoke during a calamitous second half of the 1998/99 season. Few people lost too much sleep when Brian Little resigned, for "personal reasons" at the end of the season.

That led to the appointment of Gary Megson shortly before the start of the 1999/2000 season. He was to be in charge for only three months before developments at the Britannia Stadium took an unexpected turn for the better. Megson had worked well and achieved much in his three months in charge, and proved wrong many of the doubters who had been disappointed at his appointment, but he was a pawn in a much bigger game and had to step aside for a new regime at Stoke City....

After weeks of rumours and reports, which we scarcely dared to be believe to be true, the old regime of Peter Coates and Keith Humphreys (men who were despised by many, many Stoke City supporters) was bought out and new Icelandic owners took charge of our club. The takeover was finally completed on 15th November 1999 and heralded a new era at Stoke City. A new manager came in, the former Icelandic national coach Gudjon Thordarson, and the club finally got the financial stability and backing it had been starved of for so very long. It transpired that the takeover had been the idea of Gudjon Thordarson who had taken note of the potential of Stoke City when he'd been at the ground to look at one of his national team players, Larus Sigurdsson. He took the idea of buying out and running an English football club to some money people in Iceland, they liked the idea and the rest is history. Things started to look up again following takeover with the side winning the Auto Windscreens Final at Wembley in front of 75,057 spectators and also reaching the play-offs where were were beaten in the semi-finals by Gillingham.

A five year plan to get into the Premiership hasn't quite worked out as the new owners anticipated - the collapse of the ITV Digital television deal not helping either. It took Gudjon a total of three seasons before he finally guided The Potters to promotion in 2001/02 - only to be surprisingly, some would say shockingly, sacked a couple of days after a 2-0 Millennium Stadium final victory over Brentford. His relationship with his fellow Icelandic board members had become unworkable following reports of several bitter exchanges and bust-ups. And so, Stoke City returned to the First Division under the guidance of a new, young manager in the shape of Steve Cotterill. It should have worked out but it didn't and Cotterill turned his back on the club in the Autumn after only a couple of months in the job - opting to become an assistant to Howard Wilkinson at Sunderland, immediately installing himself as one of the all-time hate-figures in the recent history of Stoke City.

Things are never simple and they don't run smoothly at Stoke, and with the club on the verge of announcing George Burley as a direct replacement for Cotterill the former Ipswich boss got cold feet and eventually joined Derby County instead. This left us appointing Tony Pulis as our new manager. Pulis hadn't been the most popular of choices amongst supporters and he was also the man who had lost out to Steve Cotterill and initially George Burley for the position. After a shaky start, plenty of which involved clearing up the mess left behind by Steve Cotterill, Pulis guided Stoke to First Division safety in the second half of 2002/03, before stamping his mark on the team in 2003/04 by taking The Potters to an 11th place finish. After several years of struggling and slip-sliding away Stoke are now, finally, managing to get a decent foot-hold back onto the football ladder. Deep down Stokies have never settled for anything less than mid-table in Division One. We enter 2004/05 with a record 10,000 season ticket sales, and if the board continue to back their manager things could, just could, be starting to look up for Stoke City Football Club.