Football in Sussex

rdf:langString Football in Sussex

rdf:langString Football in Sussex refers to the sport of association football in relation to its participation and history within Sussex, England. Football is one of the most popular sports in Sussex with over 500 football clubs and 38,000 players in the county. The game of football is first documented in Sussex in 1403 as medieval football. The modern game of football began with public schools. According to John Cairney, goalkeeping was first developed at Lancing College, which had originated its own code of football by 1856. The first goal in the FA Cup was scored by former Lancing College student Jarvis Kenrick in 1871. In the next decade, the Sussex FA was founded in 1882, with the Sussex Senior Cup beginning almost immediately in the 1882–83 season. Leagues began shortly afterwards, including the West Sussex Football League in 1895 and the East Sussex Football League in 1896. The Sussex County Football League was created in 1920. As winners of the Southern League in 1909–10, Brighton and Hove Albion played the winners of the Football League in the 1910 FA Charity Shield. Albion won the match and were dubbed 'Champions of England'. Brighton joined the Football League in 1920; it was not until almost a century later that Sussex gained a second team in the Football League when Crawley Town gained promotion in 2011. In 2017 Lewes became the world's first professional or semi-professional football club to pay women and men equally. In the same season Brighton & Hove Albion became Sussex's first full-time professional women's team and for the first time won promotion to the FA Women's Super League, the top tier of women's football. The largest football stadium in the county, Falmer Stadium has been used for to host men's friendly and women's international football matches, and was a host stadium for the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 competition.