A Swindon team made up of players with Down’s Syndrome (DS) will take to the field for an annual football match against their Northampton counterparts this Sunday.

The match, between a Swindon Town side and Northampton Town, will take place at Cirencester Town Arena.

“We do this fixture every year, and they love it,” said Clive Maguire, head of the disability programme at the Swindon Town in the Community Trust.

The match is the team’s first since a national tournament in West Bromwich in June, where they faced teams affiliated to other professional sides, including Bristol City, Crystal Palace and Norwich City.

On that occasion, they were in for a surprise, Clive said: “One of our volunteers arranged for us to have the first-team coach so we were the envy of the tournament as we drove in.”

The team broke away from a pan-disability group a decade ago, sparked by a national campaign, DS Active, which encourages physical exercise for people with Down’s Syndrome.

The highlight in the period since it was founded came last year, against Sunday’s opponents, when the Swindon and Northampton DS sides played a game at half-time in a League One match between their respective professional counterparts.

And there are further links between the two sides, with one of Northampton’s development officers being Russell Lewis, a Swindon Town centre-half in the late 1970s, who Clive used to watch at the County Ground as a teenager.

The squad have also faced tragedy, as Clive explained: “We lost one of our players, Stephen Thomas, who was killed in a whale-watching incident in Canada [he died along with his father in 2015].

“But it brought the group together, they really are a very close-knit group.”

Bringing the players together is quite some feat, with players ranging in age between three and 25.

Despite the difference in years, the group all train together, Clive explained: “We do a coaching session then we split the hall and have an older game and a younger game.

“On Sunday, it’s more about the older players, but some of the younger will come along for a training session.”