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The Big Reveal: Meet the Club We’ve Chosen to Be ‘Backed by Hudl’

8 Oct 2026

6 min Read

By Tony Sprangers

From 1,000 entries, Hudl chose one grassroots club to win professional-level tools for the season. Meet this year’s winner and see their new setup in action.

Every Saturday afternoon across the country, thousands of grassroots clubs pull on their kits, drag out the cones, and get after it. No cameras. No performance data. No major fanfare. Just a local community of die-hard supporters willing to roll up their sleeves and do what’s required to keep the local team they love active and thriving.

That's exactly how our winning club, Oxhey FC, has done it for 75 years. But now, they’re getting an upgrade.

What is Backed by Hudl?

Hudl powers the world's best football teams. Premier League clubs, World Cup winners, Champions League contenders - football’s elite have long relied on Hudl's technology to analyse every sprint, every pass, and every chance.

We are now seeing more semi-professional and grassroots clubs around the UK benefit from using parts of the Hudl ecosystem, so before this season began, we asked the question: what would happen if we brought a full professional suite of tools to a local grassroots club?

The kind of club where the budget is spent on basic equipment like cones, bibs, and balls, without a thought of an elite-level technology suite.

We launched a promotion, called Backed by Hudl, to find out. From over 1,000 entries, one club was selected to receive a full suite of professional-level technology, and we will be documenting Oxhey FC’s journey throughout this season.

The moment Oxhey FC learned they were the this season’s winners of Backed by Hudl.

What’s Included in the Prize?

Every Oxhey FC game and training session will be captured using the fully-automated Hudl football camera. No camera operator needed. No action missed. It’s a simple set and forget solution that requires minimal training to use, while delivering high-quality recordings across multiple angles.

After filming is complete, footage will arrive within half an hour to Oxhey’s Hudl team account - stored, indexed, and ready to analyse. This allows feedback conversations to happen while players are still at the training ground, or post-match function.

The final piece of the prize is physical: Every Oxhey player also receives a Titan GPS vest and pod, feeding live movement, speed and distance data into a bespoke software platform Oxhey’s coaching staff will have access to - the same platform used by professional clubs around the world.

Set and forget: It only took one 10 minute lesson for Oxhey Vice President Stu Colley, to set up their Hudl football camera.

For a club whose match-day preparation still involves worrying about whether the late arrivals will show up, it's a genuine step change.

"I've been playing football for 30-plus years," says veteran centre back James Moody, shaking his head. "It's going to be good to have a GPS tracker on me now. It would have been nice to have this 20 years ago."

Oxhey Life Member Steve Bush reaches further back: "If I'd have had this technology 40 years ago, I probably could have been a better player than I was."

For Club Chairman John O'Meara, winning the Backed by Hudl prize unlocks something beyond the pitch. "Now, finally, we'll be able to identify what's working, what isn't, who's working, who isn't," he says.

Better data tells a better story. For a club that has always been self-funded, a higher level of performance opens doors to the sponsorship conversations that could take them to the next level.

Titan GPS pods will track running distance, high speed efforts and overall played load metrics during every training session and game at Oxhey. Allowing coaches to measure performance, manage workload, mitigate injury risk, and more.

Profiling our Winners: Oxhey, A Club Built on Family

Based in Hertfordshire, Oxhey has been going since 1951. Seventy-five years of Saturday football, generations of the same families turning up in the same colours, through promotions and relegations, through the lean years and the good.

What makes Oxhey different isn't a league table or a trophy cabinet. It's the people who've never left.

"This is just a big family that plays football together." Stu Colley — Oxhey FC Vice President.

Bush has been at the club for 53 years: “since the week I was born”, he says. When his father first brought him down as a kid.

"My dad played for the club, I played for the club, still signed on now," he says proudly.

Chairman O'Meara has been involved for over 40 years. Vice President Stu Colley is coming up on 33. The club president's son plays. The vice-chairman's son plays. Colley's own son plays.

Even Jamie Eames, a former Norwich City professional who still gets calls from clubs at higher levels every pre-season, keeps coming back. "It's a family club," he says. "The vibe is so there, and it keeps me coming back."

Veteran centre half Moody has played across the Oxhey backline for nearly a decade. He says he's never once considered leaving. "This is such a family club. I wouldn't ever want to play football for anyone else - although at this age it's probably too late,” he laughed.

Stu Colley puts it plainly: "It's not just a bunch of people you go out and play football with and have a couple of beers afterwards. People are interested in you and your family. They care for you and you look out for each other.

This is just a big family that plays football together."

Spot the club veteran: Some of the present day committee at Oxhey FC pictured in the glory of their playing days.

A Club on the Rise

What makes winning Backed by Hudl feel particularly earned is the journey Oxhey has been on. Like most grassroots clubs, the pandemic hit hard. They lost two of their four senior sides. Results struggled. As captain Kane Chattey puts it, things "became completely unsustainable."

Then Antonio Cacciapuoti came in as manager. What followed speaks for itself: a 12-game unbeaten run, 11 consecutive wins, a cup final, and promotion to Herts Division 1 for the first time in the club's history - the highest league finish in Oxhey's 75 years.

"You could just see this was a club crying out for a certain level of professionalism. The Hudl partnership is the next step of that." Kane Chattey — Club Captain

Self-funded throughout, working with limited resources, the club has been carefully laying the groundwork: building structure, growing the squad, attracting players who could have gone elsewhere but chose to stay. That commitment to doing things properly - even when no one was watching - is a big part of why they won.

Club Captain Kane Chattey was the driving force behind Oxhey entering the Backed by Hudl competition.

What it Means to be Backed by Hudl

Ask anyone at Oxhey what winning this means, and the answers all cluster around the same word: timing. The club is at the crossroads of being good enough to push higher, but lacking the infrastructure to make the leap. This is the intervention that could change that.

"We're at a junction where we either really press on and try to get to Step 6, Step 5, non-league football, or we don't," explained Chattey. "We don't have the infrastructure to continue to evolve. Something like this coming is genuinely a blessing."

James Moody, who has watched this club go from bad times through the pandemic to its best-ever finish, keeps it simple. "Winning this prize from Hudl," he says, "is actually the best thing that's happened to this club."

Seventy-five years in the making. Oxhey believes that one season with Hudl can help them make history.

Look out for future episodes of Backed by Hudl as we follow Oxhey FC’s journey throughout season 2026/27.

Like what you see? For a proper look at the tools Oxhey will be backed by this season, take a look at our bespoke solutions for local football clubs, just like yours.