Perfect pitch: Millions see football club's revival

Millions of TikTok users have been gripped by a Sunday league football club's efforts to resurrect a team that folded due to a lack of players.

Determined former members of Alton FC in Staffordshire decided to reclaim an overgrown and unused village pitch to draw in fresh talent.

The resulting transformation over the summer has been watched by social media users across the world and led to the club's comeback for the 2024/25 season.

Archie Whitehead, the team's centre midfielder who also manages the social media account, described the attention as " a bit surreal, really".

The team first formed in 2019, but played its home matches about 15 minutes away in Cheadle, due to the lack of usable space closer to home.

Despite promotion to the league's top tier, dwindling numbers meant the team was forced to disband last year, but Mr Whitehead and friends were determined it would be temporary.

"We wanted to bring our football club more local," he explained. "We'd known about the pitch but never been able to put our time and effort into doing it up.

"So over the summer we decided to take on the job."

Alton FC now has enough players thanks to its newly transformed village pitch

He began to post the group's efforts online, and interest in the videos, featuring a temperamental ride-on lawn-mower that broke "every five minutes", soon snowballed.

"We've had messages from Africa, Asia, South America, wishing us luck and loving what we're doing," Mr Whitehead said.

"Talking abut their pitches at home and how they would love to do something like that."

The men's efforts also attracted enough new players to stage a comeback and they played their first pre-season match on the new pitch on 4 August.

"We've learned along the way and got a sense of accomplishment now we're actually playing on it," Mr Whitehead added.

The team, which has amassed almost 20K TikTok followers so far, is now generating a small income from the site, which it is putting back into the club.