Romford 1 Manchester United 0

On supporting Romford FC.

If you gather a group of men[1] together their conversation will at some point usually turn to sport in general and football in particular. At this juncture it is quite likely that the question of which teams everyone supports comes up, whereupon all the usual suspects are trotted out; Manchester United, Chelsea, West Ham, Arsenal and the like with the occasional Leeds, Crystal Palace or Leyton Orient thrown in. Everyone understands these teams and why people support them, even if they may patronise the Orient supporter a bit, but when I mention who I support the reactions can be varied, because I support Romford FC.

When I explain that Romford ply their trade in the Ryman League Division One North, which is a Step Four league within the non-League pyramid, or more simply, seven promotions away from the Premier League, this often prompts a question along the lines of “No, which proper team do you support?” It is inconceivable to some that anyone should support a team outside the Premier League, although it is gratifying that on some occasions there will be a flicker of recognition among those more knowledgeable of the non-League game.

So why do I support Romford? Well, back in the late sixties, when I first became interested in football I toyed with the idea of following Manchester United, for no other reason than that they were top of the First Division but even at that tender age I wanted to support a team I could go and watch and as Manchester was over two hundred miles from my home I recognised that my chances of seeing them play were limited. So in February 1968 I went to watch The Boro (as Romford are known) for the first time. 

The programme cover for the first Romford match I attended. The artist's impression of the ground in the picture is fairly accurate, if a little idealised.

In 1968 Romford were reigning champions of the Southern League, which was then the competition immediately below the Football League. Sadly there was then no automatic promotion, which instead could only be achieved by being elected by the existing member clubs. Boro regularly attracted crowds of two or three thousand to their ground at Brooklands, a magnificent stadium with a 20,000 capacity, a 2,000 seat main stand, huge banked terracing and imposing floodlight pylons. After my first visit I was hooked.  It wasn’t a conscious decision, in these matters it is like falling in love; your heart rules your head.

Romford FC - Southern League Champions 1966-67

If choosing the team you support is like falling in love then actually supporting them is like a marriage; “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part,” well it certainly has been like that supporting Romford. The investment the club had made in the ground and the players in their attempts to gain Football League status had left them with huge debts and by 1978 the club had disbanded.

If supporting a football club is like a marriage, then this one had run its course.

Fourteen years elapsed, years in which having initially flitted from match to match without any emotional attachment I eventually took to supporting Leyton Orient, before news reached me in the summer of 1992 that plans were afoot to reform Romford FC.

The new club were accepted as members of the Essex Senior League and on 22^nd August 1992 played their first competitive match against East Ham United. It was strange watching the new club for the first time, seeing faces I’d not seen for fourteen years, seeing a team in the famous Gold and Blue again, but just like in 1978 the club had no ground to call their own. An initial groundshare with Hornchurch has been followed over the next twenty years with any number of formal and ad hoc groundshare arrangements. When Romford reformed I still considered myself an Orient supporter as I’d been a season ticket holder for twelve years, but I watched the Boro when I could until eventually the old ties and bonds drew me back into being a full time Romford fan.

There have been ups and downs aplenty in Romford’s history, many more in the last twenty years than can be included here (a full history of the club can be found on the club’s website here ), but briefly the club won the Essex Senior League in 1996 and merged with Collier Row to become (for one season only) Collier Row & Romford. The next season the club won the Isthmian League Second Division, but problems with the Sungate ground at Collier Row eventually led to the ground being closed, the club being suspended by the League and dropping back to the Essex Senior League. Yet Boro bounced back and won the Essex Senior League again in 2009 to return to the Isthmian League (now known as the Ryman League). Additional cause for celebration was the decision by Havering Council to grant the club planning permission for a new ground at Westlands in London Road, Romford. Having planning permission is not the same as being able to build a ground however and Boro still lack the financial wherewithal to even start construction. In these straitened economic times attracting investors is no easy matter and Romford continue to groundshare, having moved from Aveley to Thurrock this season.

Romford management celebrate the Essex Senior League championship in 2009. Left to right: Mark Lord (Assistant Manager), Paul Martin (Manager) and Colin Ewenson (Secretary).

Anyone who has a few hundred thousand tucked away that they don’t know what to do with is invited to contact the club or me as we would be happy to put it to good use!

You may wonder what the attraction of supporting a club like Romford is. Without detracting from the fanaticism that people feel for clubs in the Premier League, supporting a team like the Boro seems to me to be more real, more involving. Romford supporters may be few in number these days but what we lack in that regard we make up for in our loyalty. We regularly take 30-40 to away games (to put that in perspective imagine Manchester United taking 25,000 fans to an away match), and twenty loyal Boro fans made the 250 mile round trip to Wroxham on a freezing cold and snowy Tuesday in February and made up nearly a third of the gate.

A snowy night in Wroxham. Romford (in yellow) take on the home side in February 2013

To me supporting Romford is not just about going to watch the game. It means a lot more to me than that. I see the same loyal friends week in week out, I get to contribute in some small way to the club by arranging the match officials and writing for the programme. It’s also pretty unlikely that supporters of Premier League clubs ever learn the team line up directly from the manager in the bar before a game!

It might have been so much easier if I had stuck with Manchester United when I was ten, or with Leyton Orient after 1992, but on the whole I think that my life would have been much the poorer for not supporting Romford, after all you never forget your first love, do you?

Up The Boro!

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[1] Ok, so women can be interested in sport too, but it is rarely a primary topic of conversation among them.