Okeford Fitzpaine’s team marks 125 years of village football, dairy roots and generations of families who have played for the love of the game
When a village football team was formed in 1900, Okeford Fitzpaine was right at the heart of the local dairy industry. The main employer in the village was Hill View Dairies, where new hires began as ‘Butterboys’ – workers from dairies began playing football as a team, and these founding members gave the club its nickname, The Butterboys.
Steve Corben started playing for Okeford United Football Club when he was 15: he’s now chairman, after 49 years involvement with the club.
Village football
‘Willie Pearce, from the milk factory, started the club with the Reverend Phillips,’ Steve says. ‘The Pearce family gave us a donation when Willie died in 1989 – we bought a cup in his memory, the Pearce Trophy, which we still award now to the Player of the Year.
‘There aren’t many football clubs in Dorset that have been running as long as we have. Some have folded, and others have stopped and then started up again over the years. But there has always been a football team in Okeford Fitzpaine for the last 125 years – it was only disrupted by war.
‘Years ago, if you lived in a village then you played football, cricket or skittles. It was a way of getting out to places, especially if you had no transport. Every village had a team, even tiny places like Hilton. If you lived in a village, you played.’
During the First World War, many of the Butterboys joined up to fight for their country. In the club’s pavilion, a team photograph taken around 1910 is on display. Sadly, of the 15 players in the photo, many did not return: the village lost 19 men to the war, and many of them would have been Butterboys. In 2024, a memorial was created by local historian Andrew Vickers on Castle Lane to commemorate all the Butterboys who died.
‘I think the reason Okeford has kept going is that there has always been a hardcore group of people. The club began playing in the Shaftesbury and District leagues up until the 1930s,’ says Steve. ‘After that, they played in the Dorset leagues. One of our most famous players was Harry Osman. Born in Hampshire in 1911, he grew up in Okeford and started playing football here in 1931. He played for Dorset, and went on to play for Plymouth Argyle and Southampton – he was Southampton’s top goal scorer in 1938. After the war, Harry became the manager of a non-league Winchester, and that’s where he spotted Terry Paine, who went on to play for England.
‘We’ve had teams that have won the league, and been runners-up. For two or three seasons Okeford played in the Dorset Senior Club – the top league in Dorset.
‘The best team we ever had in Okeford was probably in 1984. They were the strongest.’
Steel toe caps
Okeford didn’t have an individual manager until the 1970s, so everything was decided by a weekly committee meeting in the dairy building. There have inevitably been lots of changes over the years, and Steve has an archive of the old records:
‘As you go through the old meeting minutes, you can see the details right down to the price of goal nets in the 1930s.
‘They wrote down the turnover, of course, and they had to buy all the kit. Today, kits are cheap and mass-produced – I can order it, with the printing, and it will be here in three days. But in the 1970s, Okeford players wore a cotton shirt – if you got wet in the rain, it was heavy! No one had sponsors back then, it wasn’t something people thought about. I don’t think it was even allowed.
‘I have some old football boots, with steel toe caps – and they are harder than my work boots! If you hit someone in the shin – and there were no shin pads back then – you could break a bone.
‘We used to borrow the ball when I was a kid in the late 1960s, and we had to return it – they had just one leather ball. I have just ordered 60 training balls for the coming season!
‘In the 1970s a match ball would cost £20, and you treasured it, because that was a lot of money. Now we always have two match balls. Another thing is that today, the players do a serious warm up before playing. We never used to do that!’
After the Lionesses’ tremendous success in the 2025 Euros, is there an opportunity for Buttergirls at Okeford Fitzpaine?
‘Okeford had a women’s team between 1996 and around 2004. Women’s football is a different game to run – someone would need to take it on, and it would need to be the right person. But Okeford would welcome any team.’
Butterboys 125
Two years ago, Chris Chaffey – Okeford’s long-standing player, youth team leader, committee member and team manager – died suddenly after nearly 50 years of service to Okeford United. He had been in the middle of refurbishing the match day dugouts, part of the voluntary work he carried out for decades. After his death, past and present players and club members came together to finish what he’d started. The completed dugouts now bear his name.
On 16th August his family will host a special event in Chris’ memory at the football ground on Castle Lane. A veteran Okeford team will play the Dorchester Devils. Chris’ son Olly says: ‘It’s a charity event to support The Brave & Determined Company, a local mental health charity that’s already helped more than 240 people to access life-saving counselling.
‘We want to to not just raise funds, but also raise awareness – to let people know they’re not alone, no matter who they are or what they’re going through.
‘We want to bring people together, see old friends they may not have seen for a while, and know that being around others can help us all feel better.
‘As a family football club that’s been part of the local area for 125 years, this club is important to so many people. I started playing for Okeford when I was six, right through to the adult mens’ team along with lifelong friends and family members.
‘Okeford has seen generations of families play for the club – and continues to do so.’
