The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Four promotions in four seasons for city side
The rise of Cardea FC is one cracking Peterborough League story.
The city side joined the competition in Division Four in 2016 and four successive promotions later they played their first match as a Premier League club and won it, 3-1 against Leverington Sports ay Yaxley FC last Saturday.
Okaytheir final promotion after a fourth-placed finish in Division Onelast season wasa little fortunateasPolonia’slate request for a demotion from the top-flight was quickly followed by league officials asking if Cardea wanted to take the ultimate step up.
“It’s always been our aimto play in thePremierDivisionso we quickly said yes,” Cardea manager Matt Robinson said.
“We were confident that we, and the other teams that came up, would cope with the standard and if Saturday was our acid test we passed it with flying colours.
“We played played pretty well and deserved to win. It’s just the start we wanted as we now know we can win games at this level.
“We did a bit of homework on Leverington before we played them and although they are not traditionally one
of the strongest teams in the league they usually do well enough to stay out of trouble at the bottom.
“They c a me back t o equali se early i n the second- half on Saturday, but we scored two l ate goals to make it a very pleasing start.
“We are pretty much the same group of players that started out in Division Four
withjust oneortwoadditions.
“We have an excellent teamspirit as a result andthat should help us this season.
“We are used to being towards the top of the league. We won Division Three and we were in a play-off final i n Division Two when the l eague decided to promote both teams and now we’ve gone up because of
Covid and points per game!”
Cardea had originally missed out on promotion to Stilton United by 0.03 of a point before Polonia decided to drop out of the top flight.
Cardea run two teams in the Peterborough League and a ladies team. The first team are at Long Sutton this Saturday.
Cardea also field a team in the Peterborough Sunday Morning League which is due to kick off on September 20.
Cardea win the first Premier Division game in their history.