Harris Lads Football Club
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| Full name | Harris's Lads Football Club | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Lads | ||
| Short name | HFC | ||
| Founded | 12 February 1887 | ||
| Ground | El Patio | ||
| Capacity | 50,033 | ||
| Chairman | Alfredo Di Stéfano | ||
| Manager | Alejandro Nadur | ||
| League | Divisón Superior | ||
| 2017–18 | Divisón Superior, 4th | ||
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Harris's Lads Football Club is a professional association football club based in Fruxilli, Veleaz. The club currently competes in Divisón Superior, the highest tier of Veleazan football. The club is the second most successful clubs in Veleaz, having won a number of trophies including 23 domestic league titles, 17 AVF Cup, and 7 Federal Cup titles.
Founded in 1887 by a group of Newreyan sailors, HLFC quickly became one of the strongest forces in Veleazan football, regularly challenging for league titles throughout the team's history. The team is seen as the grandfather of Veleazan football, due to it being the oldest Veleazan club, along with CA Nacional, the second oldest club and often referred to the grandmother of Veleazan football, having dominated the top tier of Veleazan football for much of the modern age. HLFC his the only club to have never been relegated or suspended from the top tier of Veleazan football, after the League's founding in 1880.
The team's home stadium is the El Patio (The Yard), which holds a capacity of 50,033 making it the second largest football stadium in the country, after the national team's Campo Nacional. The club has a considerable domestic following, mostly coming from the northern portion of Fruxilli and the surrounding provinces of Guipúzcoa and Medina-Sidonia.
HLFC has several domestic and international rivalries, El Derby de los Gigantes against Unionistas de Velacruz, the two most successful in Veleazan football, and Pelea de Abuelos against CA Nacional. However, many fans consider La Pelea (The Brawl) against Club VRS Náyade to be their largest derby, a fixture considered the most dangerous derby in Aeia due to the historical antagonism between the two teams and the scale of violence that occurs during the matches
History
Beginnings and relocation: 1887-1903
Initially, Harris's Lads Football Club was formed as Fruxilli Visitors, on account of the team being largely made up of visiting Newreyan merchant sailors who occasionally held small tournaments with local Veleazan public houses to decide who would pay the bill that night, referred to as the 'TBA' by the houses. Eventually, the games began to attract larger and larger crowds, leading to the visiting sailors charging a small entrance fee to help pay the bill should they lose. Sensing that a larger profit could be made from the scheme, the games were reorganised by Harris Hampton, the dockyard supervisor, to have a more league orientated way of running things. He invited many visiting sailors to form their own teams to play in the league, leading to the foundation of the Dockyard's Cup in 1885, the first football competition in Veleaz using Henley rules.
The success of the cup tournament led to Harris forming a group, nicknamed the 'lads' after the Newreyan term for young male, of the top players in the tournament and contracting them to form a super team. The team was officially announced in September 1887 as Sporting Muelle, however many local fans still referred to the team as Harris's Lads, leading to an official name change to Harris's Lads Football Club in October on 1887.
The fanfare surrounding the establishment of the team led to numerous other so-called super teams appearing across Veleaz, with many challenging each other in amateur matches that garnered large crowds to watch. As the leading and oldest super club to have been formed, Harris brought together 14 of the largest teams to found the Asociación de Fútbol de Veleazan (AFV) in 1893, from there, the Divisiones de Futbol, placing the founding 15 teams in the highest divison, Divisón Superior. After 6 years of leading the club, Harris departed to take on the role of Chairman of the AFV and organise the league structure.
Despite losing their founder and chairman and existing as a nomadic club in Fruxilli, HLFC was a force to contend with in the inaugural season of the DS, becoming the first team to both score a hat-trick in a league cup, but to also have an unbeaten run of ten matches. The hotly contested cup eventually came to Fruxilli by way of a 1 point lead on the last match of the season, a 1-1 draw against Veleaz Nacional (later CA Nacional).