HOME BARGAINS –v- HIGHGATE ALBION
FA Sunday Cup Semi-Final
Date: Sunday, 24 March 2024
Kick-Off: 2pm
Location: Kidderminster Harriers, Aggborough Stadium, Hoo Road, Kidderminster, Worcestershire DY10 1NB
Since elite professional football gets so much attention, I like to write about areas of football that get overlooked. Among those is the FA Sunday Cup; an excellent but unheralded nationwide competition for the best Sunday football teams in England. For those who think Sunday football is a dumping ground for the unfit and overweight – think again. Teams and their players have to be seriously talented and fit to compete in this competition. Most players who play in it are ex-professionals or semi-professionals. Elliott Nevitt scored a late winning goal in extra time to give Campfield (from Liverpool) a 1-0 victory in the 2021 FA Sunday Cup final. A few weeks later Nevitt signed a professional football contract with Tranmere Rovers and won the League Two Player of the Season award in his first season as a professional footballer.
This season’s competition has reached the semi-final stage and one of the semi-final ties features a match-up between two teams who are the best Sunday teams from Liverpool and London respectively.
Home Bargains Football Club
Location: Liverpool
League: Merseyrail Business Houses League
Year Founded: 1988
Home Ground: Alder Road Sports Club (Pitch 2), Alder Road, Liverpool L12 2AY
This season: Top of the Merseyrail Business Houses League (5 points clear at the top of the table)
Last season: 7th place in the Merseyrail Business Houses League (out of 14 teams)
Honours:
4 time Merseyrail Business Houses League Premier Division champions
Best FA Sunday Cup Performance: 2017 (semi-finals)
Recent FA Sunday Cup performances:
2022-2023: Round 2
2021-2022: Round 1
2019-2020: Round 3
2018-2019: Round 1
2017-2018: Round 2
Management Team:
Manager: Brian Moogan
Assistant Manager: Joe Gibiliru
Liverpool and “The Nash”
As I have said before: “death, taxes, and Liverpool teams in the FA Sunday Cup final”. For Liverpool teams, it is all about “The Nash” (as they call the FA Sunday Cup). Liverpool teams have a remarkable record in this competition and have won it more than teams from any other city in England. After Lobster FC became the first team from Liverpool to win the FA Sunday Cup 45 years ago in 1979, Lobster’s victory started an amazing sequence of Liverpool success where teams from Liverpool won the competition that scousers call “The Nash” for 5 consecutive years. For them it is the Champions League of Sunday football. Oddly, Liverpool FC’s (the professional football team!) era of dominance in English professional football also overlapped with this era of Liverpool dominance in the FA Sunday Cup. Liverpool won the English Football League championship in 4 of the 5 successive seasons that Liverpool teams won the FA Sunday Cup. Those 5 cup wins were not isolated. That era of Liverpool success has continued into the present era as 10 different teams from Liverpool have won the FA Sunday Cup. Teams from Liverpool have been in two of the last three finals, and last year’s beaten finalists Aigburth Arms also play in the same league as the semi-finalist team I am previewing in this article.
If the FA awarded the FA Sunday Cup to the teams with the best names, then Liverpool teams would win the Cup every year! Lobster, Fantail, Dingle Rail, The Eagle, Almithak, Nicosia, and Oyster Martyrs are among the memorably named 10 Liverpool teams that have won the FA Sunday Cup. Liverpool’s only remaining representative in this season’s competition carries on the Liverpool tradition of having a memorable name.
47 years ago a Liverpool businessman named Tom Morris opened a shop called Home and Bargains in Liverpool. Back in 1976, Morris was only 21 years old. Today he is a multi-billionaire and the shop he opened now generates £2.5 billion in revenue, has over 500 branches, and over 20,000 employees. The company also sponsors football teams such as Bolton Wanderers, Tranmere Rovers, and…a Sunday football team named Home Bargains FC!
Home Bargains originally started in 1988 as a youth team called St Brendan’s Juniors in the Tuebrook Junior Football League. Most of the original players were boys who attended St Oswald’s Catholic Primary School or Cardinal Heenan Catholic School (where Steven Gerrard went to school) in Liverpool. The Daily Mirror newspaper sponsored the club at one point, and as the boys playing for St Brendan’s Juniors youth team grew up, they moved up to the under 13s section of the Edge Hill Junior Football League, then to the West Derby Junior Football League, and then to the under 18s section of the South Merseyside Youth League (winning multiple trophies along the way). At each stage they still had the same core of players who attended St Oswald’s and Cardinal Heenan schools.
Home and Bargains FC was born when one of the boys’ parents walked into shops in the Old Swan shopping area of Liverpool looking for sponsors, and secured sponsorship from Home and Bargains. When the boys became adults, they started playing men’s football in the Liverpool Business Houses League. The club eventually changed its name (twice) and followed its sponsor by changing its name to “Home and Bargains” and later condensed it to Home Bargains. Jim Vaughan (also an alumnus of Cardinal Heenan Catholic School) was the club’s first manager, and later became its chairman. His son James Vaughan later became the club’s manager and for several years the father and son duo Jim and James Vaughan managed the club and served as the club’s chairman and secretary, respectively.
“The Bargain” (as they are nicknamed) has long experience in this competition. It has been entering this cup for the past 19 years and was good enough to reach the semi-final in 2017. Incredibly, 6 members of the original St Brendan’s Junior’s youth team were still in the squad when Home Bargains reached that semi-final decades later. Although Home Bargains lost that semi-final 1-3 to the eventual winners Hardwick Social from Stockton (and ironically lost again 0-1 to Hardwick Social in round 3 of the following season’s competition, as Hardwick Social won the FA Sunday Cup for a second successive season), others involved with Home Bargains have won the FA Sunday Cup.
Home Bargains’ assistant manager Joe Gibiliru won the FA Sunday Cup at Anfield 20 years ago while playing for Nicosia (another team from the Liverpool Business Houses League). Gibiliru scored in the final and won the cup alongside his dad Joe Gibiliru Sr who was Nicosia’s player manager. Current West Ham United first team coach and former Bolton Wanderers midfielder Kevin Nolan has also worked as Nicosia’s assistant manager, chairman, and sponsor. Home Bargain’s current manager Brian Moogan was in the Liverpool and Everton youth academies during his playing days before Everton released him in 2004. Moogan later played for, and captained, Vauxhall Motors when it was playing at Step 2 of the football pyramid in the Conference North. He also previously played in the FA Sunday Cup for Canada FC; also of the Liverpool Business Houses League.
Home Bargains currently has a 5 point lead at top of the Merseyrail Business Houses League’s Premier Division (which prides itself as the toughest Sunday league in Britain). It has several players with good pedigree and experience of playing for Saturday non-league clubs. Its prolific striker Will Dunne (who scored 5 goals in Home Bargains’ 3rd round 6-0 victory over Olympic FC from Bradford) plays on Saturdays for Vauxhall Motors in Division 1 West of the Northern Premier League (Step 4). This is a good omen one of the FA Sunday Cup’s most famous names; Leighton McGivern, also played for Vauxhall Motors on Saturdays when he won the FA Sunday Cup with Liverpool club Oyster Martyrs in 2011 and 2013.
Home Bargains’ opponent Highgate Albion will have its work cut out as Home Bargains has scored 18 goals in the 5 games it played en route to the semi-final this season, and conceded only 2 goals. Home Bargains record this season is all the more impressive when one considers that 3 of the 5 teams that Home Bargains beat to reach this stage are champions of their respective leagues (including Birkenhead Sunday League champions AFC Dock, Bradford Sunday Alliance League champions Olympic, and Manjaros Langbaurgh League (Middlesbrough, Redcar, and Cleveland areas) champions and two-time consecutive North Riding FA Sunday Cup winners Belle Vue Rovers – who moved to the Stockton Sunday League this season).
Home Bargains’ Route to the Semi-Final:
| ROUND | OPPONENT | OPPONENT’S LEAGUE | SCORE | DATE | VENUE |
| 1 | Dock | Birkenhead Sunday League | 5-1 | October 8, 2023 | Vauxhall Motors FC (Cheshire) |
| 2 | Greenhoffs | Coors Sunday League | 2-0 | November 12, 2023 | Kidsgrove Athletic FC (Staffordshire) |
| 3 | Olympic | Bradford Sunday Alliance League | 6-0 | December 10, 2023 | Heron Eccles Football Hub (Liverpool) |
| 4 | The Brow | Merseyrail Business Houses League | 3-1 | January 21, 2024 | Alder Sports Club |
| Quarter-Final | Belle Vue Rovers | Stockton Sunday League | 2-0 | February 18, 2024 | Stockton Town FC (Durham) |
In the next part of this article, I will preview Home Bargains opponents: the trophy collecting machine from north London otherwise known as Highgate Albion. You can read part 2 of this article at this link.
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