HISTORY:

The club first entered the National League back in 1979, as Brinnington Lapwings. Playing at Brinnington School, Stockport, they took their nickname from the street on which the school lay - Lapwing Lane.

They achieved immediate success, with back-to-back "trebles" of Northern Division 2 winners, Division 2 Play-off Champions and Women's Trophy Winners, and gained promotion to Division 1 - a status they were to maintain for ten seasons - changing their name to Stockport in the process.

During that decade they achieved a second place finish in 1988, going on to win the Championship, and reached the Championship Final (from 3rd place) the following year. They also had a three-year spell (1983-86) when they played as "Manchester Belgrade", though only the name was different, as both their venue (Peel Moat, in Stockport) and the directors remained the same, and they reverted to being "Stockport" in 1986.

It was under the name of Manchester that they won their first top-flight silverware - the National Cup in 1984, beating Crystal Palace over two legs.

At the end of the 1980s they found themselves slipping down the table, finishing 11th out of 12 in 1990, and this may have been the spur for their co-operation with Manchester Giants (whose name they adopted), as they played the following season at Stretford. This brought no revival, however, and they finished last in Division 1 in 1991, with just one victory in twenty games.

They did enter Division 1 again for the following season, and are listed in that year's handbook, but withdrew before the campaign began. The Manchester Flames team that played in Division 2 between 1994 and 1999 had, I believe, no connection with the Lapwings.

In 1999, however, Manchester dropped out of the League, and Stockport Lapwings, who had continued with their youth development programme, re-entered Division 2.

They once again proved an immediate success, winning the Northern title and reaching the Trophy Final, and they went on to reach the Division 2 Championship Final in 2001 and 2002. Meanwhile their youngsters lifted the Cadet Cup in 1999 and the Championship in 2003, along with the Junior Cup and Championship double in 2000 - as well as reaching four other Cadet and Junior Finals in the same period.

That accent on development, together with astute recruitment of their foreign players, produced a squad that was strong enough to finish as runners-up to Sheffield in the Northern Regional group in the reorganisation of 2004, resulting in a return to Division 1 after a thirteen year absence.

They found the competition increasingly strong, however, and competition for the top players also became fiercer, with the arrival of Manchester Mystics as a force in Division 1. As a result, despite finishing a creditable 6th in the ten-team division in 2006, the Lapwings chose to drop down again into Division 2.

ALL-TIME COMPETITION RECORD