Former player returns as new main sponsor

Clitheroe will be running out in a strip adorned with a former player’s company logo in next season’s EVO-STIK League campaign.

The First Division North Blues announced on Monday that Littletown Farm, owned by Paul McGuire, would be sponsoring their home and away kit over the 2014-15 campaign. He was involved in spells from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties, helping the club to the Lancashire Combination title in 1979-80 and the North West Counties League Division Two championship in 1983-84.

His company, which he bought in 1996 and is based in Goole, East Yorkshire, specialises in chilled food distribution, supplying bacon, cooked meats and dairy products to independent discounters and convenience stores including their main customer B&M Stores who have retail outlets in the surrounding areas.

Directors at Shawbridge are delighted that McGuire, pictured with the club’s chairwoman Anne Barker and flanked by players David Lynch and Danny Wilkins modelling the new kit, is on board.

The club’s new main sponsor is thrilled to be involved so closely again with the Lancashire outfit. He said: "It is a pleasure to sponsor Clitheroe FC and give back something to the club where I had such memorable times. It would be great if local lads came to the forefront and played their football at Shawbridge. The club now has a youth team so what an opportunity we have for this to happen.

"I actually played under five managers, two were successful, Dave Morris who won the Lancashire Combination and the late great Eric Whalley who sadly passed away the other week. He was a born winner, winning three league titles and the Lancashire Cup, and probably the most successful manager in the club’s history.

"I shared such successful times with Clitheroe lads, names that simply roll off your tongue - Denis Underwood, Frank Richards the Whiteside brothers Simon and Nigel, Graham Walker, John Kirk and John Lawson. We lived and breathed football and seemed to gel with the other lads from out of town."