DORCHESTER Town are gearing up for the biggest-ever edition of their increasingly popular Magpies Football Festival, sponsored by Acerbis.

In previous seasons, the Magpies have staged the event across two days.

However, the festival, which begins tomorrow (9am), is now so popular and renowned that Dorchester have added an extra day of football to the line-up.

Amongst the programme will be an entire day of girls’ football, continuing the legacy of the Lionesses and their famous Euro 2022 triumph.

Age groups taking part range from under-sevens to under-15s in the mixed category plus under-eight, under-ten, under-12, under-14 and under-16 girls.

READ MORE: Dorchester Town Under-18s complete double

Dorchester themselves will field 42 youth teams entering across the various classes.

Speaking to Echosport, Dorchester director and tournament organiser Cameron Dabbs explained why the event is the biggest so far.

He said: “In the past this has been a standard two-day event and we’ve put it on the Bank Holiday weekend pretty much due to demand.

“We’ve jumped from 120 teams to 172 at the moment. It’s going to be big.

“We want to showcase us as a community-run club. The event is entirely run by volunteers of the club.

“We’ve got our usual team that enter every year and because of how we’ve expanded, we’ve got a lot more teams coming from afield, with the furthest being Hertfordshire.

“We’re pretty much covering the whole of the south. There’s a team coming from pretty much every county on the south coast.

“There’s quite a few coming from Bristol and Winchester.

“Every year we’ve done the two-day event, there’s always been one or two age groups that have had to miss out.

“With what we’ve done this year we’ve been very fortunate to receive funding from the Trident Community Foundation, which is partnering with the Southern League.

“It’s for us to support an entire day of girls’ football, following on the legacy of the Women’s Euros.

“We will have our standard 120-odd mixed teams on the Saturday and Monday, then on the Sunday it’s entirely girls. We’ve got about 48 girls’ youth teams attending.”

Dabbs added: “We’ve been very fortunate to have a fantastic kit supplier with Acerbis for the last five years.

“This year they wanted to get involved with the tournament, they’re sponsoring and they’re coming down to provide teams with kits for next year.”