Stevenage Boro Juniors Blacksox - All Stars

Stevenage Boro Juniors Blacksox - All Stars are a Saturday football team made up of 12 team members.

The team is from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom and play in the Royston Crow.

Stevenage Boro Juniors Blacksox - All Stars started using TeamStats in May 2012 and so far have created match reports and statistics for 60 games.

The history of Stevenage Borough Juniors FC

When Stevenage Borough FC won promotion to the Football Conference after winning the Ryman League Premier Division in 1993/4, three of the players who had played a major part in that success were former Stevenage Borough youth team players who had graduated to the first team.

In those days the Stevenage Borough youth team was recruited from local Hertfordshire players, and was able to produce players of the quality needed to play in the Football Conference. However, with the creation of the Premier League and the subsequent increase in the number of foreign players, many English players who would previously have played in the Football League were now playing in the Conference. This meant the standard was so high that the Stevenage Borough youth team were no longer able to provide players of appropriate ability for the Conference.

In 2000, Stevenage Borough FC created the EFCO scheme which mixed football with education and concentrated on 16 to 18 year olds and because the existing Stevenage Borough youth team could no longer fulfil the role for which it was created and acting on the advice of the club chairman, a self funding "sport for all club" Stevenage Borough Juniors FC was created.

The club joined the Royston Crow League for the 2000/1 season with just 5 teams, and in 2001/2 joined forces with Longmeadow Athletic FC, a move which added a further 3 teams. At the same time, the club started to recruit players at Under 6 and Under 7 age groups.

In 2002/3 the first girls team was added and this proved a major milestone as this team went on to win the Hertfordshire County Cup and, a couple of seasons later, was formed into the highly successful Stevenage Borough Ladies team that has since gone from strength to strength and plays at the same level in women's football as the main Stevenage Borough FC does in men's football.

The main surprise to the volunteers who formed Stevenage Borough Juniors FC in 2000/1, was the extremely high ability of the more able players who joined at age 4 and 5 and numerous players from our younger teams have subsequently signed for clubs in the Premier League and Football League. (For example, four of our 2008/9 Under 8 age group have signed for Arsenal and two for West Ham).

This successful development of younger players is down to the fact that Stevenage Borough Juniors tries to create a coaching regime which enables every player to make the most of their natural ability. In some cases this means signing for a professional club, in other cases, simply becoming better players.

The club now runs an Under 5 nursery with 20/30 players, 26 mini-soccer teams from Under 6 to Under 10, 6 11-a-side boys teams from Under 11 to Under 16, two girls teams at Under 12 and Under 14 and two ladies teams, both of which are through to the quarter finals of the Hertfordshire Women's Cup.