Romford FC vs Aveley FC

Romford FC vs Aveley FC

Wed 26^th September 2018

Rookery Hill (East Thurrock United)

 

Romford FC History

Romford FC was first formed in 1876 and played in the old Southern League until closing down in 1915.

Re-launched in 1929 they played as amateurs in the London, Athenian and Isthmian leagues adopting the ‘Boro’ nickname in 1937 when Romford was granted royal borough status.

In 1949 Romford contested the first Amateur Cup final at Wembley in front of a 93,000 crowd.

Turning professional in 1959, during which time their team included such famous names as Malcolm Allison, Ted Ditchburn and Trevor Ford, Boro won the coveted Southern League title in 1967 but due to large debts incurred for ground improvements in their unsuccessful efforts to be voted into the Football League they closed down again in 1978.

REFORMING again in 1992, when local policeman David Howie convened an open meeting, the club joined the Essex Senior League, achieving 9th place in the first season and 4th place in the second season while sharing the Bridge Avenue stadium of Hornchurch FC.

In 1994-95 the club was able to enter the FA Cup for the first time for sixteen years and finally won the Essex Senior League title and a League & Cup winning double in 1995-96 having moved to share the facilities of Ford United FC at their Rush Green Stadium.
RYMAN LEAGUE 1996 – 2002. The Essex Senior League title having been achieved under a new chairman and management team a merger arranged with Collier Row Athletic for the 1996-97 season.. Boro then joined up with them at their Sungate ground to play in the Ryman League Division 2 under the name ‘Collier Row & Romford’.

Reverting back to the name Romford FC in season 1997-98 they achieved a final 7th place in Division 1 and 10th place in the following season. In 1999-2000 Boro finished 4th from bottom in Division 1 and a disappointing 2nd from bottom the following season.

There were some successes during this period, however, as the club were East Anglian Cup Winners in 1997-98, reached the 3rd round of the FA Youth Cup in 1998-90 and next season the first team beat Congleton Town 6-0 to reach the 4th qualifying round of the FA Cup.

In mid season 1998-9 Romford then had to deal with some enforced changes in personnel caused by the departure of the club’s chairman, team manager and a number of players.
Unfortunately at Sungate there had been an increasing deterioration of facilities causing a number of home fixtures having to be played at borrowed grounds. Ultimately, having finished in last place in Division 2 in 2001-2, Boro resigned from the Ryman League, rejoined the Essex Senior league, and still with manager Paul Joynes in charge, returned to the Fords’ Rush Green Stadium for season 2002-2003.

ESSEX SENIOR LEAGUE 2002–2009. With Paul Joynes still as manager Romford ended this season in 5th place. Joynes then moved on to manage Tilbury and the popular former playing duo of Mark Reed & Paul Rogan took over as joint first team managers.

Successes during this duo’s tenure were a Gordon Brasted Memorial Trophy 3-0 win against favourites Ilford in 2003-4 and an Essex Thameside Trophy Runners-up prize in 2004-5. The team reached a final 5th league place in the Essex Senior League in both those seasons.

For 2005-6 Reed & Rogan had to rebuild the side after several key players left and Romford ended the season in 17th place. But the managers’ efforts were rewarded in 2006-7 with the club being runners up in both the league and league cup to double league & cup winners Brentwood Town.

In mid 2007-08 Reed & Rogan stepped down and the successful reserves management pairing of Paul Martin & Mark Lord took over to begin a record breaking unbeaten year long league match run and a final 5th place. Losing the use of Rush Green at the end of 2007/08 Boro arranged a share with Aveley FC and, having won the 2008/09 Essex Senior League title, promotion back to the Ryman League.

RYMAN LEAGUE 2009-2014! During this time Romford FC, with Martin & Lord still in charge, have achieved creditable final mid-table places and, following a new ground share arrangement with Thurrock FC at Ship Lane RM19 1YN for 2012/13, finished in an excellent 8th place after an unbeaten April run. Their Reserve team also having been reformed at the beginning of this season finished second in the Essex Senior League Reserve Division West and the Under 18 team finished mid table in the Eastern Junior Alliance London Division.
Season 2013/14, still under the guidance of Martin and Lord, saw an 11th place finish and for 2014/15, Mark Lord having retired after many excellent years service, Boro will be led by Paul Martin assisted by Alex Goldstone and Paul Clayton for another season in the Ryman North..
ON THE GROUND FRONT Romford FC are at last hopeful of playing at their own ground once more having received planning permission from the London Borough of Havering to build a new stadium at Westlands Playing Fields, London Road, Romford. The club are currently going through various procedures to be able to proceed with this project.

 -----------

Romford are currently playing their home games at Rookery Hill in Corringham – the home ground of Conference South side East Thurrock United.

Definitely one of the shortest journeys for an away game at just over 11 miles although for tonights game we had to take a detour via Chadwell-St-Mary due to an accident that had closed the A13 just after the Tilbury turn off east bound.

10 minutes into the journey and Sam announces that he has left his scarf at home so I had to lend him mine to avoid a mad dash back home.

This is our first trip to Rookery Hill and in the dark we wasn’t sure how full the car park would be so we parked up on the road just outside the ground – probably the right decision as the car park looked quite tight and busy when we walked through to the turnstiles.

Admission was £8 for adults and £1 for under 16’s

 

The programme was priced at £2 and was an impressive 40 pages printed on standard printer paper with a glossy cover. The programme included 17.5 pages of adverts and 3 pages with details of the Aveley club and players.  The cover and some of the ads were in colour but the remaining content including photos was in black & white.

Highlights of the programme were the four football related columns which were interesting to read and make a welcome change from the normal home club related news. This is our favourite away programme so far this season.

 

 

Once again a good turnout from the travelling supporters which made up about 1/3 of the total attendance of 134.
 

Pauline and I went off in search of a Romford pin badge for Sam but unlike the fully stocked East Thurrock club shop next to the entrance we were informed that they don’t bring any merchandise to mid-week matches so Sam was disappointed that he couldn’t add to his collection. The chap we spoke to said that he’ll try to bring one to the reverse fixture to fill the gap so fingers crossed.
 

Having already eaten before we left home, I asked Ryan for his views on the food. He bought a burger for £3 which included both cheese and cooked onions and was rated as very good but not quite as good as Soham on Saturday (although I understand that the Soham burgers were amazing). 
 

Not wanting to make the same mistake we made at Bowers we waited until the toss was completed before setting off to put up the Sons of Aveley flags behind the goal

Millers Line Up: 

1. D.Hughes
2. S.Sampayo
3. S.Mvemba
4. J.Love
5. H.Gibbs
6. S.Cross
7. M.Milner
8. C.Witherspoon
9. A.Teniola
10. A.Freeman
11. A.Akrofi

Subs : T.Richarson,G.Doyle, T.Martin,  S.Ngandu, W.Reid

I have to confess that I didn’t make any notes about the actual game – hoping to cobble something together from both the Aveley & Romford twitter feeds but both clubs failed to report any of the action.

It was a very disappointing night for the Millers who failed to show their usual attacking flare and had precious little in the way of goal scoring chances. Romford capitalised on a couple of defensive lapses to score 2 goals but never really looked in control of the game.

Romford were forced into 2 early changes following injuries to Taylor Tombides (13 mins) and Kurt Smith (27 mins) and went into the lead through Tombides replacement Max Bolton in the 35^th minute.

Something to note from the first half is the two incidents where an Aveley player slid off the pitch behind the Romford goal and became wedged under the boundary fence where the wire fencing doesn’t reach the ground and the metal prongs on the bottom were then caught in the players sock on one occasion – I wonder how many players may have picked up an injury from a similar incident. Luckily no injury was caused in these cases but it is worrying nonetheless

Halftime score was 1-0 and it looked like we could certainly repeat another of our recent comebacks but on 54 mins Nick Reynolds scored a second for the Boro.

Aveley made some changes to try to get back into the game bringing on Doyle for Gibbs (62 mins), Martin for Akrofi (66 mins) and Shad for Milner (72 mins) but despite a few late chances were unable to make a breakthrough. 

Aveley drop to 3^rd in the league table and now have two cup games at home before our next league game away to Maldon & Tiptree.

We trudged off back to the car with heavy hearts but we’ll be back at Parkside on Saturday for the FA Trophy against Tooting & Mitcham United 

Good luck to Romford for the rest of the season and we look forward to getting a pin badge when they come over to Parkside.