The county football associations are the local governing bodies of
association football in
England and the
Crown dependencies. County FAs exist to govern all aspects of football in England. They are responsible for administering club and player registration as well as promoting development amongst those bodies and
referee
A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...
s.
Most of the county FAs align roughly along
historic county boundaries, although some cover more than one county, and some of the major cities, particularly those with a strong football tradition, have their own FAs.
The
Sheffield FA was the first to be created, in 1867. Several institutions have county FA status in their own right, including each branch of the
British Armed Forces
The British Armed Forces, also known as His Majesty's Armed Forces, are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, s ...
,
English Schools, and the
Amateur Football Alliance, which has a strong presence in the
south-east of England
South East England is one of the nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. It consists of the counties of Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshi ...
.
County football associations host 'county cups' –
knockout
A knockout (abbreviated to KO or K.O.) is a fight-ending, winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, mixed martial arts, karate, some forms of taekwondo and other sports involving striking, a ...
cup competitions held at a sub-regional level, which are open to affiliated members of the county FA. Typically, county FAs will host cup competitions at the following levels: senior, intermediate, junior, women's, veterans, senior Sunday football, intermediate Sunday football and junior Sunday football.
The county football associations, along with their counterparts from
Wales,
Scotland and
Northern Ireland, ran the
Tesco Cup
The Tesco Cup was an association football competition for young footballers ran in the United Kingdom and sponsored by the retail group Tesco. There were three separate tournaments, a boys' Under 13, a girls' Under 14 and a girls' Under 16. Any te ...
, a tournament for players under 16, from 2005 to 2011.
List of county FAs
See also
*
English football league system
The English football league system, also known as the football pyramid, is a series of interconnected leagues for men's association football clubs in England, with five teams from Wales, one from Guernsey, one from Jersey and one from the Isl ...
*
The Football Association
*
The FA Council
The FA Council consists of 92 elected representatives, from the FA Premier League, the Football League, County FAs, and the non-executive board of The Football Association. The council meets to decide the major policies of The FA, which is the gov ...
References
External links
The County FAs The FA
County FA contact detailsCounty Football Associations, page 5
Premier League
{{County Football Association
England