Marine A.F.C.

Marine Association Football Club is an English football club based in Crosby, Merseyside. The club, which was founded in 1894, is a member of both the Liverpool County and Lancashire County Football Associations, and currently plays in the National League North, the sixth tier of the English football league system.

Marine is also notable for having the longest-serving manager in postwar English football. Roly Howard occupied the post from 1972 to 2005 and oversaw a total of 1,975 games.

History

1894–1970

The club was formed in 1894 by a group of local businessmen and former college students. Marine takes its name from a hotel on the River Mersey sea front at Waterloo, seven miles to the north of Liverpool city centre, where the founders of the club met. Marine moved to its present ground, Rossett Park, in 1903.

In 1923, a Marine player won international honours for the first time when Robert Idwal Davies was selected in the Wales team to face Scotland. Davies was one of four debutants.

Marine quickly won multiple titles in the I Zingari League and the Liverpool Combination. The club's greatest success as an amateur team in this period culminated in an FA Amateur Cup Final appearance in 1931–32, where they lost 7–1 to Dulwich Hamlet in front of a crowd of 22,000 fans at the Boleyn Ground.

In 1935–36, the club moved to the all-professional Lancashire Combination and enjoyed limited success before moving to the Cheshire County League in 1969–70.