In 1895 Hills helped to set up a football club for the Works' employees, Thames Ironworks F.C. and within their first two years they had entered the FA Cup and the London League.
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The Thames Ironworks formed a works football team, called Thames Ironworks Football Club, This club later become West Ham United F.C., whose emblem of the crossed hammers represents riveting hammers used in the shipbuilding trade.
Upton Park F.C was founded in 1866, and is believed to have folded for the second and last time around 1911, while West Ham United, an unrelated organisation, were founded as Thames Ironworks F.C. in 1895, before reforming as West Ham in 1900, playing their first games at Upton Park, the Boleyn Ground, from 1904.
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Thames Ironworks' new venue, the Memorial Grounds, was opened on Jubilee Day, 1897, to coincde with the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria to the throne.
They also participated briefly in the London League Division One for the 1896–97 season before withdrawing, and were the last club to play Thames Ironworks at their Hermit Road ground on 8 October 1896, when they lost 1–0.
In November 1897 Arnold Hills, the owner of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, whose football team Thames Ironworks FC (reformed in 1900 as West Ham United) played at the Memorial Grounds, secured an agreement with the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway to build a station at Manor Road.
"The Irons" had not yet played London Welsh and as a result, and probably thanks also to Arnold Hills' presidency of the league and Francis Payne's drafting of the rules, Thames Ironworks F.C. were awarded two wins by default and finished the revised league as runners up.
It was a seamless transition for the club to make as Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Co. Ltd owner Arnold Hills was also president of the London League, and along with Thames Ironworks F.C. committee chairman Francis Payne, helped to draft the competition's rules.