Surbiton Lions

Surbiton Lions are a Sunday League football team made up of 28 team members.

The team is from Surbiton, Greater London, United Kingdom and play in the Chessington & District Sunday Football League Division 2.

Surbiton Lions started using TeamStats in November 2008 and so far have created match reports and statistics for 169 games.

Surbiton Lions Football Club was formed in March of 2008 due to Dave Squires and Brett Waugh getting the hump with their team at that time, Kings Arms and deciding over a few pints that they could do a much better job of running a club. They decided to take on the roles of Chairman/Manager and Secretary respectively and Phil Amuaku volunteered for the Treasurer job.

Over the next few weeks, we managed to prove that it wasn't just the beer (and Southern Comfort) talking and put together the finances, squad and zillion forms to join Division 9 of the Leatherhead and District Sunday Football League. We built the squad up through training sessions and pre-season friendlies before the start of the 2008-2009 season. Despite an initially rocky start when we lost our first few games, we did well enough to finish third in the division (won't mention the cups).

For the 2009/2010 season we were in Division 7 with three other teams from last season. We had a squad of just over 20 with some new recruits, who have mercifully brought the average age down a bit. Our home pitch is Old Tiffinians Sports Ground in East Molesey and we are currently sponsored by The Antelope pub in Maple Road Surbiton, which has a great landlord, Jerry, a beer garden, and big screens for sports.

For the season 2010/11 we moved Leagues to Chessington & District which had only started up in 2009. This league came about from ex-Leatherhead committee members having a major falling out with the rest of the board and deciding to set up their own league. We were in division 3 and in unknown territory for the most part as we don't really know the other teams. We got a load of new players in and although some fell by the wayside during the course of the season, we still managed to get a full team out for every match. We had our best start to the season and were 2nd up until Christmas. There must have been something seriously dodgy with the mince pies, because our form fell away dramatically in the New Year and we went on a run of 8 games without a win. We ended up 5th in the division, our worst position in our history so far.

Onto the 2011/12 season and we were now in the 2nd Division of a league down-sized to two divisions. It was all change at the top: Brett decided to concentrate on family and golf, Dave decided to concentrate on anything other than football, so Phil Amuaku (your Teamstats webmaster) took over as Secretary with JP Sheahan stepping into Dave's shoes as player/manager (minus the half time team talk profanity) and Simon Drury is now Chairman. Matt Ryan is now keeping the books as Treasurer, though so far he has refused to follow the established tradition of collecting the match fees in his underwear.

We had a mixed bag of a start to the season. In League and Cup we alternated between winning and losing games, only breaking the cycle with a draw against AFC Reigate. Happily, our winning cycle coincided with the cup games and we had our best ever run in the cups this season, winning a total of five cup matches (far more than we've ever achieved in a season) and getting through to the third round of the County Cup and the quarter finals of the Senior Challenge Cup. The fact that we got well and truly thrashed on our way out of both cups and the Junior Oak for good measure in successive games is neither here or there. We did however put together a great run in the League at the start of the year, going a record breaking 9 games without defeat. In fact our only defeats in 2012 itself came against the two teams that finished top of the table, just two losses in 14 games.

With too many draws though, that run was only good enough to get us another 5th-placed finish, though this time it was in a division of 12 rather than 8 teams.

So with a strong showing already in 2012, can we continue where we left off and genuinely challenge for the title in the club's 5th season? Watch this space and if you're ever in the neighbourhood of one of our games, feel free to come along and watch us.

UPDATE:

Fast forward to September 2017 and after an absence from this site for about 2 seasons, your webmaster is back to keep the new look Teamstats site updated. We're still going and still in the CDSFL. JP Sheahan served us well and guided us to our first semi final in the 2012/2013 season. We lost that game against Newdigate, who also pipped us for the title as we had our best ever season so far, finishing 2nd.

We earned promotion to Division 1 for 2013/14, which proved a step too far in class and we were beaten most weeks, and morale sunk to the point where we almost folded. We were back at a more sustainable level in Div 2, but still struggled to a low finish in the following two seasons, finishing third from bottom in both. JP decided it was time to retire from management life and carve out a new chapter in life as a dynamic player in a Vets team (eventually, when he's actually old enough).Up stepped Nathan Rafe to take the managerial reins for the 2016/17 season. Had a lot of new faces to integrate into the team and didn't get to the greatest start with a 6-1 loss against a team new to the league.

Things improved though and as it turned out, the new team in question - The Wheatsheaf - beat just about everybody, winning two cups and our division. One of the cup victories came via a 1-0 win over us in the semi-final, where we failed to take advantage of the few chances we had and paid the price. Still, we finished 9th out of 13, best finish for a while so we had a little more self-belief going into our 10th season.

2017/18 UPDATE:

As it turned out, that confidence was not misplaced in the slightest and what an anniversary season was. Several records were broken as we marched to not one but two trophies for the first time in our history. We got to our first cup final - the Intermediate Oak Cup - and beat Chessington Galaxy 2-1 on a balmy night in Banstead. Nelson Samuel-Onyugo got the winner in that game and he set a new season's best goal-scoring record of of 27 goals. He more than likely broke the record for most goals per minute of pitch time as he turned up so late for most of the games. Collectively, we scored 66 league goals, beating the previous best set in 2012/13. We had a record nine wins on the trot in all competitions (won't mention how that particular run ended) and although it was a bit anti-climactic in the end, won the Division 2A title by 6 clear points.

So on the back of that success, we're now back in Division 1 for 2018/19 and looking to erase the painful memories of 2013/14. We've lost some long standing players and last season set a standard that will be hard to live up to. However, we know now, just how well we can play and what we can achieve, so bring on the new season and COME ON YOU LIONS!!!!!