The club claims it was originally founded in 1861, which would make it the fourth oldest association football club in the world, however there is no contemporary evidence to support this claim. The earliest record of football being played by a town club comes from 1873, when a group of 15 Worksopians took on 15 from the Pestalozzian school in the town. The first recorded use of the Worksop Town name came in 1882, when a team using that name played Eckington on 18 February