Everybody loves a rags-to-riches story in football; it’s intertwined into the very romance of the game. But the financial climate of modern-day lower-league English football has ensured that there have been plenty of tales with an extra element involved in such heart-warming narratives, the so-called “phoenix” clubs that have risen from the ashes of financial dereliction with new hope for a future that their original incarnations failed to live long enough to see.
This season’s prime example are Hereford FC, who on Sunday will bring 20,000 fans to Wembley Stadium for the final of the FA Vase, the national knockout competition for teams playing below the eighth tier of the English football pyramid.
For 52 weeks a year, such lowly pursuits represent a football experience that is about as glamorous as the part-time players at this level, an almost-cliched mix of plasterers, mechanics and shop workers who train between their day jobs and play in front of crowds numbering, at best, a few hundred hardy souls. On Sunday, they play in the national stadium.
As a young journalist at the turn of the millennium, my first job at a local newspaper involved reporting on the home games of Hereford United, the forerunners for Hereford FC. Then playing in the Conference (England’s fifth tier), United already had cracks at that point that were beginning to show; crowds were dwindling, financial problems rife. The football wasn’t all that either: history may have made such memories slightly fuzzy, but I swear that I never witnessed so many 0-0 draws in the space of a year and a half.
The club had languished around the lower reaches of the Football League and the higher divisions of the non-league pyramid for most of their existence, before eventually going out of business in 2014. It was a sad end for a side that became storied thanks to their most famous moment in 1972, when one of the FA Cup’s finest and most iconic goals — an unstoppable 30-yard screamer from Ronnie Radford — helped them to a shock victory against the mighty Newcastle United, then a top-flight northern powerhouse.
In a cyclically neat touch, Radford is due to be at Wembley to cheer on Hereford FC. The new club has only existed since December 2014, and this is the culmination of their first full season. It’s already been a resounding success. They won promotion at the first attempt after topping the Midland Football League Premier Division, in the ninth tier, with an impressive 108 points and a plus-105 goals difference (played 42, won 35, drew 3, lost 4). They have also won two regional cup competitions.
There are numerous nods to the enduring appeal of football at this level in Hereford’s squad, not least their captain, Joel Edwards, who’s a Hereford lad through and through, and their manager, Peter Beadle, was in caretaker charge in United’s final year in existence. Refusing to forget the club’s roots, Hereford FC even play at United’s once-dilapidated Edgar Street, and are among the best-supported clubs in non-league football, regularly attracting four-figure crowds to home games.
Win or lose, for 20,000 Herefordians, the FA Vase final appearance will be footballing vindication of the power of hope over despair. For the first time in the old or new club’s history, Hereford are going to Wembley.
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