Leichhardt Saints Football Club

Leichhardt Saints Football Club (LSFC) is a family oriented sports club that believes in promoting participation in our game and equal opportunity for all players.  We are a volunteer run community club that recognises that individual players have different motivations for playing football ranging from highly competitive to social recreation.

Leichhardt Saints FC fields teams in the Canterbury and District Soccer Football Association (CDSFA) for both male and female players of all skill levels, from 5 year-olds to our Over 45s teams. Our home fields are King George Oval, Balmain Road Playing Field and Sydney Secondary College Leichhardt Campus.

The Club is also able to offer a Game Leader (junior referee) program and a junior Summer football program, including a Mini Roos kick-off program for 4 to 7 year-olds.

Leichhardt Saints FC had their beginning in the mid-1960s with junior football teams playing under the banner of the Leichhardt Police and Citizens Youth Club (LPCYC), which were run by Reg Dowton who was the police sergeant at the time.

The club was situated in Norton Street, Leichhardt, and the early teams were made up from the Western Suburbs Soccer Club and the LPCYC. The name Saints came from an amalgamation of junior clubs from St Fiacres, Leichhardt, who joined under the LPCYC banner.  In the 1970s Jim Sherratt and Ivan Petrie coached junior sides at the club and from there started the first All Age team, mainly from 17 year-olds, playing in the Sydney Amateur League.

Over the next two decades the number of LPCYC junior sides declined but a group of parents and players revived the junior section in the early 1990s and started using King George Oval in Rozelle, which remains the club’s spiritual home ground.  In early 1994, the football club had been growing steadily, and was able to form a standalone entity which was the start of the club known as the Leichhardt Soccer Football Club.

In 2004 the club won its first major title when the Under 12 Girls team, coached by Life Member Barry Shuttleworth, were NSW State Cup Champions.  At the end of the 2006 season the club decided to change its name to both reflect the new profile of Football in Australia and formally adopt the “Saints” name, becoming the Leichhardt Saints Football Club.  The Club has also thrice won the Canterbury district Fair Play Award in 2010, 2012 and 2018 which reflects the Saint’s approach to good sportsmanship of  “Compete fiercely, win modestly, lose graciously”.

Leichhardt Saints FC has grown steadily from 150 players in 1993, to over 1000 in 2021 and now boasts teams in every age group playing in the Canterbury District.