A tremor rippled across Berkshire in May 2023 when a press release dropped about the formation of a new football club in Windsor taking on the lease of the famous old Stag Meadow ground.
The news saw Windsor FC – the ‘phoenix club’ to the original Windsor & Eton FC which was wound up in February 2011 – searching for a a new home, eventually settling at Beaconsfield Town’s Holloways Park.
Windsor were relegated from the Combined Counties League Premier Division North at the end of the 2022/23 season to Step 6, while the new Windsor & Eton (2023) would begin life in the Thames Valley Premier League (Step 7) at the start of the 2023/24 season.
It was always likely then the two sides would face each other sooner rather than later, and upon Windsor & Eton earning promotion, that meeting would most likely take place in the second half of 2024.
Cut to 26th August and Windsor travel to their former home to face Windsor & Eton for the first time in the Combined Counties League Division One with both sides having good starts to the season under managers Matt Stowell (Windsor) and Matty Angell (Windsor & Eton).
Perhaps the match is less important here than the match up – Windsor & Eton won 1-0 thanks to a first half Pawel Kowallkowski goal and stay top of the table.
What happened off the pitch was that the match-up piqued interest across the town and further afield. The hosts reported a +600 paying crowd for a Step 6 game and estimate an average home crowd of 200.
According to the brilliant Non League Crowds Twitter account, only the Nuneaton derby had a higher Bank Holiday Monday crowd.
To put that in context, Basingstoke Town at home to Bracknell Town three divisions higher pulled in 1,002. Maidenhead United’s first win of the season at home to Barnet in the top tier of Non League Football pulled in 1,426.
The return fixture is yet to be scheduled, but with the plethora of cup competitions at this level, it may not be the only meeting of the two sides at Stag Meadow this season.
