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Humble
Beginnings
Since 1898,
Camberley's Captain Knight Croquet Club excelled in promoting physical
fitness to the well-to-do youths of the local area.
Swamped with requests from eager cadets entering into the Royal
Military Academy, an association football club was established and the
first game the Knights played was against Royal Chambermaid's XI - losing
17-1 - with a consolation own goal coming from Chambermaid's goalkeeper
Bertie Gumdrop who had taken a blow to the head moments earlier.
Troubled
Times
Facing a
crisis after the First World War, the team continued thanks to the
players' wives, who donned thick woolen shirts, greasepaint moustaches and
hobnail boots to compete under the auspices of the real Knights, most of
whom had been lost at the Somme.
Once the local league officials rumbled the elaborate hoax - which
had helped the Knights reach 3rd in the Surrey and Home Counties Sunday
Football Combination Alliance and the Herbert Bottletop Snr. Intermediate
Cup Final with a 2-1 win over local rivals Old Dean and Frimley Green
Academicals - the club was placed under administration and forcibly
removed from the town, relocating themselves in the land-locked nation of
Switzerland.
Dreaming
of England
Competing in
the Swiss NLA, the renamed Steaua Kriens Knights, won the league in 1919,
pipping the previous year's champions Servette and finishing ten points
clear of the following season's victors - Young Boys Bern - the first
openly homosexual professional football team.
After five seasons in the top flight, the club were relegated and
the ensuing fall-out caused rifts to break the club into SC Kriens and the
ill-fated Farhkink Böstörd Sporte Klubbe Fußball - who were to last
just forty-five minutes into a 3rd Division game before floodlight failure
and arguments over who paid the electricity bill put paid to their hopes.
Phoenix
from The Flames
It took over
50 years for the original Camberley side to resurface. The grandsons
of a number of the Steaua Kriens Knights players who had moved to the
United States after the Second World War had established a small 'soccer'
side in Wyoming.
With the onset of the cultural revolution, many players competed
under the effects of various illegal substances - which might have
explained why the Wyoming State She-Devils vs. Burp County Lightning Fish
match-up was abandoned due to players refusing to come out of the dugout
while the pitch was covered with penguins.
Eventually, the team was sold to a billionaire oil tycoon for $2
million and forced to play behind closed doors for the amusement of the
magnate. The founders - Dwight Baskin and Chuck Robbins III -
invested their money in a number of hair-brained schemes - including some
kind of frozen dessert - but lost it all and returned to their family seat
in Heatherside.
Back
Home
Without
a decent football team for longer than those still living in the area can
remember, in 2002 a crack group of amateur historians and frivolous
playboys resurrected the Captain Knights ideals and formed a team from
rejects, vagabonds and drop-outs, gathered from rival teams, pool halls,
Police drunk tanks and job centres.
Established for the 2003-4 season and affiliated to the Surrey
Football Association, the Strikers,
as they came to be known - for reasons more related to Thatcher's Poll Tax
than their scoring ability - play in the Camberley
& District Sunday Football League.
Previously aligned to the rival club AFC Krooner, the majority of
the 'reserve' team decided that they were not being supported completely
and so decided it would be in the best interest of both sides if they were
to join the wily band of rebels.
After agreeing to a sponsorship deal with Camberley's The Staff pub
and long discussions in the same venue and Le Taj curry house, the
Strikers were established to bring back the glory days enjoyed in
Camberley, Switzerland and Wyoming - long-may they kick your team's ass.
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