AS Kendal Town FC prepare to celebrate their centenary this year, it would be fair to say these are testing times for the club and its faithful supporters.

But that century of football has seen some glorious times too, and there are plenty of golden memories for the club formed by employees of the K Shoes factory back in 1919.

Taking their name from the area of the town where the factory stood, Netherfield FC were provided with land for a home pitch at Parkside, and in 1925 the team achieved its first notable success by winning the Westmorland County Cup.

After the demise of a rival club which coincidentally shared the club's current name Kendal Town, Netherfield became the area's premier side and when football resumed after World War Two, they joined the semi-professional ranks by becoming members of the Lancashire Combination.

It was an ambitious move but it proved a successful one as Netherfield not only landed the league title in 1949 but became renowned FA Cup battlers as the crowds rolled up in their thousands to see them take on a succession of Football League sides including Barrow, Chesterfield and Gateshead.

More than 15,000 watched their 1950 FA Cup second round defeat at Watford and in 1955, they managed a memorable 3-3 draw against Wrexham at Parkside Road while the following year, more than 5,000 fans packed their home ground for a tie against then mighty Grimsby Town.

Goal hero Tom Brownlee found the net an incredible 76 times in season 1963/1964, when Netherfield finished Lancashire Combination runners up, and the following year they went one better and won the title despite having sold Brownlee to Bradford City at the start of the campaign.

In 1968, the club became founder members of the Northern Premier League, but the strain of competing each season against the likes of Morecambe and Wigan Athletic took its toll and Netherfield invariably found themselves at the wrong end of the table.

In 1982, they set a record when an FA Trophy tie against Bridlington Trinity was finally settled at the seventh time of asking, but the victory was a hollow one as the expenses incurred by the continual replays strained the club's already fragile finances further and they decided to move down to the North West Counties League.

With the K Shoes factory having closed, Netherfield were briefly known as Netherfield Kendal before the club changed its name to Kendal Town at the dawn of the new millennium.

And under new floodlights erected two years previously, Tony Hesketh led them up to the UniBond Premier League in 2006, promotion being clinched with a last gasp Peter Smith goal in the play-off final against Gresley Rovers.

However, relegation followed in 2013 and since then, Kendal Town have battled on in the fourth tier of non-league football despite an increasingly tight budget.

As their second century of existence dawns, the Mintcakes must try to survive in a largely rural area with no large population to keep the turnstiles clicking, a crippling factor in these increasingly money driven footballing times.

But this is still a proud club, and one which had a golden post war era and still attracted big names in more recent years with the likes of Alan Kennedy, Leighton James and Lee Ashcroft all having spells at the helm.

And the hope is that the local football loving public will stay loyal to their local side in future years and give them at least a fighting chance of recapturing their former glories.