The Pirates - from mates having a kick-around to champions

Nyetimber Pirates bosses show off the season's silverware

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In 2008 a group of schoolfriends started an indoor football kick-around at The Arena in Bognor on a Friday night ... and it quickly turned into a local football revolution.

After a year, organisers Charlie Welling and Jamie Walter decided to form Nyetimber Pirates FC and enter the Chichester & West Sussex Sunday League. And the rest is history.

Welling said: “We started playing indoor football when the 2007-08 season had ended. Most of the boys were at different local clubs and at the time it was just for a laugh and something to do. Nyetimber Pirates were a kids’ team in the 1970s and we always used the name as a joke name and it just stuck.

“We never intended to have a Saturday team – we were all in our early 20s and most of our mates were playing in the county league or for Newtown Villa, and that wasn’t going to change any time soon so we decided to put a team into the CWSSFL.

“Mark Harnett at ND Autos had played for the Pirates in the 1970s and he bought us a home kit, Jack Pearce at Bognor lent us an old Rocks kit to use as our away kit and gave us a few old balls and we were on our way. Most people didn’t think we would last the first season, which spurred us on to prove them wrong.”

Welling was appointed manager, with Walter the goalkeeper in the impressive side made up of mainly schoolfriends, many playing on Saturdays in the county league.

The Pirates started impressively ,winning a league and cup double in their first season, 2010/11, losing only two games all season.