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Ambitious Chesterton are a club who are going places

All Areas > Sport > Football

Author: Roger Jackson, Posted: Thursday, 25th April 2019, 09:00

Chesterton have enjoyed great success this season Chesterton have enjoyed great success this season

Chesterton may be the new kids on the block but they have pretty much swept all before them this season.

The club – Chesterton Association Football Club to give them their full name – have been banging in the goals left, right and centre almost from the first kick-off as they’ve clocked up win after win.

And it’s not just in the Cirencester League where they have enjoyed such a good campaign because they also won the GFA Primary Cup.

The club were formed by Tim Bond and Jordan Stallard, who grew up together in Chesterton and were at school at Deer Park in Cirencester, and this is their first season.

Now in their mid-20s, they are joint managers of the football club – Stallard is also the club’s secretary – and it’s fair to say that the success that the club have enjoyed is beyond their wildest dreams.

“One hundred per cent,” admitted Stallard, “we never expected this to happen. The main aim is keeping the lads together and developing the football club.”

That shouldn’t be too much of a problem because the club certainly appear to have been built on solid foundations.

“It took a year’s work behind the scenes by Tim and I before we were able to join the league,” explained Stallard.

“We wanted to play football with our friends and that was always our main aim.”

Stallard is a former player/manager of Cirencester Pilgrims who play in the Cotswold Churches League – he also played for Poulton – while Bond is a former player with Malmesbury Vics and Bibury.

One of Bond’s ex-team-mates, George Peare, is the club’s leading goalscorer – he was a centre-back with Malmesbury Vics – and Stallard admitted that Bond’s connections had certainly helped to fast-track their new club.

Mind you, they work hard too.

“We train every Thursday night at 9pm at Cirencester Town,” said Stallard. “It’s hard work but our fitness levels definitely show in games.”

While Peare has been one of the key players – “He’s scored a lot of crucial goals,” said Stallard – it’s also been very much a team effort.

“It’s unfair to pick out players,” continued Stallard. “We’ve got so many good players who go unnoticed, our midfield works so hard.

“We’ve got the players to get the ball out wide and see what happens, we tend to go for a 3-5-2.

“We’ve got 20 players signed on and we could have had double that.”

It could be that they will have more players next season because Stallard confirmed that they were thinking of setting up a reserve team with the first team moving across to the Cheltenham League.

“Quite possibly,” he said. “The reserve team would play in the Cirencester League, the Cirencester League have been very good to us.”

Stallard is also keen to praise Siddington who have allowed them to play their home games at Siddington playing fields which are just a long goal kick from The Greyhound pub.

He is also generous about their opponents. They drew their first league game of the season 2-2 with Hatherop and Stallard said that both they and Fratellos are “good teams”.

And Chesterton, who were recently awarded the FA Charter award, are certainly a good team too and there’s clearly more to come.

“We’ll do everything to evolve the players we’ve got and the club we’ve created,” said Stallard. “There’s no way we won’t get bigger than we are now.”

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