DARE TO DREAM

My first couple articles for the new website have been around volunteers and reasons why we carry on doing things through thick and thin, a prime example was Romford vase triumph, in the football league this past week a truly fantastic boys own story has come to fruition, one which has taken 132 years, park football ,local leagues and a lot of heartache along the way and guess what they already wrote a book, made a stage play as well as a film, it all started in the late 1960s, in the warm glow of England winning the World Cup, Dave Roberts, like most teenage boys his age, was football mad.
There was just one difference: rather than supporting the likes of Arsenal or Manchester United, Dave's team of choice was the ever so slightly less glamorous Bromley Football Club - one of the last genuinely amateur football teams left, fighting for survival in the lowest non-league division. This is the story of Bromley's worst ever season. It is a funny and heartwarming tale of football at the very bottom: Dave turns up to each match with his football boots in his bag, just in case the team are a player short; the crowd is always announced as 400 as no-one can be bothered to count; the team ship so many goals that in one match, the taunting opposition fans actually lose count of the score. It's easy being a football fan when your team are always winning. The Bromley Boys is the touching true story about supporting a club through thin and even thinner: proof that the more your team may lose on the pitch, the more there is to gain on the terraces. Bromley's Hayes lane ground is a traditional old fashioned football ground.Bromley Football Club's story began in 1892 as part of the South London League before the club became a founding member of the Southern League two years later.

The Ravens had stints playing games at Queensmead Recreation Ground, Glebe Road and Plaistow Cricket Club, before finding their permanent home at Hayes Lane in 1938.
Fast forward from years and years of doom and gloom and the questioning of why do we carry on watching & you arrive at some remarkable events that
Coincided with the release of the book, the play, the film, gradually from a laughing stock the ravens Moved up the leagues no longer whipping boys but boys that were now whipping other teams through promotion after promotion until the London club's breakthrough into the EFL became the latest landmark in a list of recent achievements under chairman and owner Robin Stanton-Gleaves and manager Andy Woodman.
Woodman, 53, joined the club in March 2021 and led the club to the play-off eliminator a few months later.
The following season, the Ravens beat Wrexham 1-0 at Wembley to lift the FA Trophy.
Bromley then reached the promotion semi-finals in 2022-23, losing 3-2 to Chesterfield after extra time, before achieving promotion via the play-offs last season.
Stanton-Gleaves said all their promotion prize money had gone towards replacing the old artificial grass with a new hybrid turf pitch at Hayes Lane that complied with the EFL's regulations, costing £750,000.

It's just further proof that although it's rare , dreams really can happen , Roy of the rovers stories do happen again it's why we do what we do because we all live in hope we will be the next fantasy story.