Daisy Hill F.C.

Did You Know?

• Daisy Hill's Under 18s side reached the FA Youth Cup First Round proper in the 2005–06 season, a first for a team from the Bolton Boys Federation.
• The club's home match against FC United of Manchester in the 2005–06 season was moved to Victory Park and drew a crowd of 1,682.
• Social media influencer Aaron Hunt became chairman on 12 February 2025, and attendances rose to 200+, with exhibition matches drawing over 1,000 spectators.

History

Daisy Hill Football Club was founded in 1894. During the 1896–97 season, they won both the Wigan & District League and the Westhoughton Cup, going undefeated across all matches that year. By the outbreak of World War I, the team was already based at New Sirs, their current home ground, and was competing in the Leigh & District Senior Sunday School League. They later moved to the Westhoughton League, where they collected several titles in the 1920s and 1930s.

In that era, Lancashire County Cricket Club players Dick Pollard and Bill Farrimond also turned out for Daisy Hill on the football pitch, and Alf Gray, who would go on to play for Torquay United, began his career with the club in the early 1930s. The club dissolved sometime before World War II and was revived in 1951, returning to the Westhoughton League but now playing at St. James Street Recreation and Cricket Ground. They moved back to New Sirs in 1957.

After securing the lease on the ground, Daisy Hill joined the Bolton Combination. With new dressing rooms built for the 1968–69 season, the club went on to win the Bolton Combination Premier Division four times, the Bolton Combination Cup four times, and the Lancashire County FA Amateur Shield twice. In 1978, they entered the Lancashire Combination, spending four seasons there from 1978–79 to 1981–82. They then became a founding member of the North West Counties League Division Three in 1982, the same year a new clubhouse was built at New Sirs.

In 1986–87, they finished fourth in Division Three, and the following season, after that division was absorbed into Division Two, they reached the second round of the FA Vase. After the 1988–89 season, the club changed its name to Westhoughton Town, competing under that name for five seasons from 1989–90 to 1993–94, before reverting to Daisy Hill for the 1994–95 campaign. That season, under managers Jimmy Hulton and Tony Riley, the club won the Atherton Charity Cup for the first time.

Daisy Hill then remained in Division Two for the next 14 seasons, until the league was restructured and Division Two was renamed the First Division for the 2008–09 season.