Rotating squads is part and parcel of modern football – but Royal Navy coaches could find themselves with a major headache if they tried to rotate the 42,000 members of their own pool of players.

Luckily for the Royal Navy Football Association (RNFA) most of its members do not don boots, shorts and shirts each week - strictly speaking, every sailor and Royal Marine is a member of the association.

But as it begins its second century, the organisation can look back on a century of sporting success - and a future of great promise.

The Association celebrates its 100th birthday this year, and is seeking to promote interest in the national game at all levels of the Navy.

This year should see a string of high-profile matches involving RN men and women around the world at grounds as diverse as Fratton Park in Portsmouth and Plymouth Argyle’s Home Park to – hopefully – a World Cup Finals stadium in South Korea.

That’s the measure of the game’s popularity, and as RNFA spokesman Cdr Steve Pearson said: “Wherever there’s a Royal Navy ship or unit in the world, there’s a good chance they will play a game of football when they’re in port”.

That attitude has won the RN plaudits from the Football Association. Working with CCPO Steve Johnson at HMS Temeraire, the FA is keen to promote ties between British football and the game worldwide with matches between ships and units on foreign visits.

At a time when the sport’s image is increasingly under the microscope at home – and not everyone likes what they see - such matches at ‘grass roots’ level can go some way to restoring faith in the national game.

But RN football chiefs are quick to acknowledge that, despite being the national game, there’s nothing yet which quite compares with the Army-Navy rugby clash at Twickenham.

“Rugby has had a lot of attention recently, not just with the World Cup but also with the Army-Navy game,” said the former Commanding Officer of HMS Newcastle, a lifelong fan of Crewe Alexandra who still enjoys the odd run-out on the five-a-side pitch.

“But we’ve got Euro 2004 coming up, and if England do well, then we’ll do well. Our links with the Football Association are growing stronger all the time.”

The inter-war period was the heyday of Services football, when the game saw a boom in general in the UK after the horrors of the 1914-18 conflict.

It’s a measure of the era that the future (albeit briefly) monarch Edward VIII was guest of honour when the Army and Navy clashed at Fratton Park in the 1921-22 season, seeing the Senior Service triumph 1-0.

Navy sides have proved a breeding ground for footballing talent in the past, especially in the post-Second World War era.

Portsmouth FC in particularly benefited from the Navy’s soccer stars – three ex-RN men formed the core of its 1949 and 1950 title-winning teams, none more so than the legendary Jimmy Dickinson.

He spent three years in the Navy in the 1940s before making 764 appearances for Pompey as half-back and wing-half, and went on to win 48 caps for England as well as later managing the Portsmouth team.

Strangely enough, it appears that Gentleman Jim – never booked in more than 800 appearances for club and country – never played for the full RN side during his time in the ranks.

In the inter-war years, Rigger H.L. Coates made eight appearances for England from 1927-33, and a generation later namesake Jimmy pulled on an England jersey three times, playing at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and becoming a regular for Kingstonians.

Among the more recent footballing figures to blossom in the ranks is TV pundit and former player/manager Chris Kamara, the much-travelled midfielder who turned out for a string of respected League clubs including Pompey, Bradford City and Stoke.

Not surprisingly, Pompey have been inextricably linked with the Navy for the past century. Their ground hosted the Inter-Port competition for four decades from 1905, and it is a tradition which the RNFA is keen to revive –Navy soccer chiefs hope this season’s Navy v RAF match will be staged at the Premiership ground.

The boom area in 2004 is women’s football.

“We’ve seen a tenfold increase in interest in the ladies’ game in recent years. That’s encouraging, but so too is the progress on the pitch,” Cdr Pearson said.

“Recently the women’s side thrashed Yeovil Ladies, who are a good professional team.”

The future of the men’s game also looks bright. A Navy side regularly turns out at the prestigious Dallas Under-18s Tournament – an invite not extended to many amateur sides – and the Navy’s players hold their own against the youth sides of some of the top professional clubs from around the world.

It is a far cry from those early days of the RNFA.

The offices of the Southern Daily Mail in Portsmouth – one of the ancestors of the city’s current evening paper, The News - were the unlikely setting for the founding of the association 100 years ago.

One century on, the offices and that particular newspaper have gone, with the site now housing the multi-storey office block of Zurich Insurance, but the association continues to thrive.

And on the spot where it was founded, Zurich Insurance will host the centenary reception on January 13, ushering in the year’s events.

Dinners, auctions and games against professional sides are all lined up for the birthday year.

• Tickets for the centenary RNFA dinner on HMS Warrior in Portsmouth on July 9 are available from the RNFA Secretary, HMS Temeraire, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth, PO1 2HB, priced £25. Open to all current and former RN players, coaches and officials.