Stanway Rovers Football Club, nicknamed “Rovers,” is a non-league football club based in Colchester, Essex.
Established on 10th July, 1956, they currently compete in the Pitching In Isthmian League North Division, which is part of the eighth tier of English football. The team calls Hawthorns their home ground.
Records show a club under the same name competed in the early 1900s and won Division II B of the Essex & Suffolk Border League in 1927–28. The modern club entered Division Two of the Colchester and East Essex League, reaching the Premier Division by 1960 and winning it in 1967–68 and 1973–74.
In 1975 it switched to the Essex & Suffolk Border League, earning promotion from Division Two in 1978–79 and winning that division again in 1981–82 and 1985–86. A 1986–87 Division One triumph returned it to the Premier Division. The side reached Essex Intermediate Cup finals in 1990 and 1991, losing both 3–1, and finished as Premier Division runner-up in 1991–92, which led to Eastern Counties League Division One. It won Division One in 2005–06 to rejoin the Premier Division and captured the League Cup in 2008–09 and 2011–12.
After 2017–18 the club moved to the Essex Senior League, returning to the Eastern Counties League Premier Division after one season. Initially playing at King George V playing fields in Lexden, it moved to The Stanway School in 1961; a 1979 agreement secured a 99-year lease on a 4.6-acre site where The Hawthorns clubhouse opened on 18 November 1982.