Roanoke Wanderers
COMING
SOON
COMING
SOON
ONE ROANOKE WENT MISSING.
Another Roanoke built a bunch of trains, put a big-ass star on a mountain, and is now founding a soccer club that intends to stay exactly where it starts.
THIS CLUB REFUSES TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH ANY [AFFIRMATIVE] FORM OF THE WORD LOST.
A squad built never to concede. We’ll study every clean sheet in the modern game and adapt until all we do is draw. After the full 90′, whatever happens, happens.
Even a dumb penalty shootout still goes in the books as a draw.
Try your luck against the ol’ 8-1-1.
YOU 0 – 0 ROA
Nice Draw!
TAP WHERE TO PLAY IT, FORWARD OR BACK.
ROANOKE, AWHILE AGO
In 1890 a mapmaker from Philly drew our city center. Eight years earlier, 400 people lived here. Now there were 22,000. Hence, “The Magic City of the South.” And the compliments kept coming: “Her present phenomenal, her past remarkable, her inducements unrivalled, her future magnificent.”
Look at us now… magnificent. Mostly.
THE OLD STATION
The railroads made this town, and it shows. Right here the Norfolk & Western, the Shenandoah Valley and the Roanoke & Southern all meet. Everything else grew up around the tracks.
THE EAST END
Follow the tracks east and you get to the Roanoke Machine Works, opened in 1881. Between 1884 and 1953 this yard built 447 steam locomotives.
In the 1930s, more than 6,000 people worked here. That’s a lot of grandpas.
EAST END SHOPS
The Queen of Steam rolled out of here in 1950. A little yard switcher named No. 244 was finished in 1953, and with it, the end of an era... as it was the last steam engine built in America for an American railroad. A pitch would fit right about here.
WHY NOT?
There are certainly plenty of reasons why this wouldn’t be feasible. We know the railroad left the shops in 2020, and we know someone has leased part of the place since. We don’t have players, a league or any money at the moment. But having a few thousand people back in that yard in the middle of downtown seems like the right setting for this team to represent our Roanoke.
Plenty of clubs are called Wanderers. The first adopted the name in 1864, and meant it literally. They had no ground of their own. Regardless, they still took home the first FA Cup. If the shops can’t have us, we’ll earn the name the same way, splitting our home games between every stadium in the valley that will take a booking.
There’s plenty around that might work.
SALEM STADIUM
SALEMHOME?
7,157 seats, opened in 1985. It hosted the Stagg Bowl, Division III football’s national final for a while. Also sits right next to where Borat sang the national anthem at the rodeo.
KERR STADIUM
SALEMHOME?
Roanoke College. 1,400 seats, FieldTurf and lights. Already home to the Maroons’ soccer, lacrosse and field hockey teams.
WILLIAM FLEMING
ROANOKEHOME?
William Fleming High School’s first stadium on its own campus, finished in 2010 after Victory Stadium came down.
PATRIOT STADIUM
ROANOKEHOME?
Patrick Henry High School, in Grandin Court, up Grandin Road from Grandin Village and the Grandin Theatre, Roanoke’s first suburban movie house.
VICTORY STADIUM
CLOSED 2006
1942–2006. R.I.P. 24,540 seats, the biggest football stadium in Virginia when it opened. In 1961 it was the site of the first successful civil rights boycott of a professional sporting event when a Colts–Steelers preseason game played to desegregated stands.
RIVER’S EDGE
ROANOKEHOME?
Wiley Drive, at the foot of Mill Mountain, with the Roanoke River running through the middle. Five soccer fields; the north side was rebuilt in 2020 with new fields, lights and scoreboards.
Roanoke Wanderers is an exercise in what a club here could be and what it might look like. The crest, the colors, the ground, the plan never to concede. A cheeky stunt. It’s a possibility, not a concrete plan. If you like what you see, or you’ve got an idea, let us know.
GET IN TOUCHWe haven’t settled on a kit. Have a go yourself: every collar, panel and print is in the Kit Room, and you can send us the one you’d wear.
DRAW YOUR OWNRWA Livery, the typeface used on every heading on this page, is free and open source. Inspired by rail lettering, it has three axes: weight, roundness and slant. We’d love to see what you do with it.