Oneida FC (Oneida Football Club) is a

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club based in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. The organisation was estabished in 2011 and plays its home games at East Boston Memorial Stadium, owned by the city of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. The field also hosts

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

games. In the past, Oneida had a

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

team which was dissolved in 2013. It played in the

USA Rugby League The USA Rugby League (USARL) is the official governing body for rugby league, a code of rugby football, in the United States. The organization also runs the national amateur competition for club teams in the US. The league consists of six te ...

(USARL) from 2011 to 2012 before pausing their operations. The team played their home games at Henry G. Steinbrenner '27 Stadium on the campus of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. In 2020 a separate organization, "Oneida County Football Club", was started in Utica, Oneida County, NY. They feature youth soccer teams. On June 4, 2022 the 2010 birth year team played there final tournament winning the prestigious Northstars Cup. There currently is a 2011–12 team.

History

Rugby League

The Oneida FC rugby league club was established in 2011 as a charter member of the newly announced

, which was formed by teams that had left the established

American National Rugby League The American National Rugby League (AMNRL) was a rugby league organization in the United States that operated from 1997 to 2014. The country's first domestic rugby league competition, it hosted an annual league from 1998 through 2013. Throughout it ...

(AMNRL). The team was named in honor of the

Oneida Football Club The Oneida Football Club, founded and captained by Gerrit Smith Miller in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1862, was the first organized team to play any kind of football in the United States.football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

team in the United States, which operated from 1862–1865. Together with the

New Jersey Turnpike Titans Rugby league has been played in the United States by club teams since the 1970s. In that time a number of amateur and semi-professional clubs have been established and ended up going defunct. American National Rugby League *Aston Bulls (1998–2 ...

and the

Rhode Island Rebellion The Rhode Island Rebellion were an American semi-professional rugby league football team based in Providence, Rhode Island. The Rebellion compete in the USA Rugby League (USARL), which they joined as a charter franchise in the 2011 season. Hist ...

, they were one of three new teams to join the league. The club operated under the leadership the USARL's other

-based team, the

Boston Thirteens The Boston Thirteens (officially written as Boston 13s RLFC) are a professional rugby league football team based in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. The team previously played in the USA Rugby League, before turning fully professional in 2021 and be ...

, but competed as a separate team. The establishment of Oneida FC put two USARL teams in Boston, and four in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

, an arrangement that lowered operating costs. The team struggled on the field in their inaugural season but found success in recruiting players from other sports. Oneida finished the 2012 season in sixth place, missing the playoffs. They were initially announced to compete in 2013, but withdrew before the season, along with the

New Haven Warriors The New Haven Warriors were a rugby league football team based in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. They played in the American National Rugby League (AMNRL) from 2006 to 2010 and in the USA Rugby League (USARL) from 2011 to 2012 before withdrawing. T ...

. Oneida FC played all home games at Henry G. Steinbrenner '27 Stadium at the

Soccer

The organization also fielded an amateur

team under the "Oneida FC" banner in the Casa Soccer League of Boston, where they won the championship in 2011. They moved to the Bay State Soccer League (BSSL) in 2013, where they currently compete in Division 2.

USARL season summaries

References

External links