Former Croydon Advertiser reporter and BBC sports correspondent NEIL BENNETT, pictured right, returned to an old stomping ground in Thornton Heath to catch up with the progress of AFC Croydon Athletic under their new celebrity owners, Stormzy and Wilfried Zaha
Cornering the market: Croydon Athletic’s players get themselves ready for kick-off on Saturday
A quiet revolution is brewing in Croydon football. Not at Selhurst Park, the home of Premier League club Crystal Palace, but at the Mayfield Stadium, home of non-league club AFC Croydon Athletic.
Athletic plays in the ninth tier of English football, in the Combined Counties Football League Premier Division South, below the Isthmian and Southern Leagues.
But the prospect was interesting enough to have tempted global rap star Stormzy and Palace great Wilfried Zaha to buy in last year. They must be enjoying the season in which The Rams are pressing for a play-off place.
As a Croydon boy who played on the same pitch 50 years ago, long before it became the Mayfield Stadium, I’m intrigued at Wilf and Stormzy’s involvement and wonder where they see the project going. The recruitment of ex-Palace and England striker Andrew Johnson as director of football is nothing if not a statement of intent.
There’s a lot to like about AFC Croydon Athletic.
Their 6-1 win over Tadley Calleva (they’re from Hampshire) on Saturday was achieved with crisp, attacking football by quick and skilful players. No diving or trying to con the referee and played in a no-nonsense sporting spirit often missing in higher echelons.
Close to the action: the crowd enjoyed Saturday’s Non-League Day 6-1 romp over Hampshire visitors Tadley Calleva
The whole vibe at the Mayfield Stadium is of somewhere going places. A welcoming clubhouse, friendly atmosphere, a well-produced website and match programme and up-to-date posts on social media.
What’s more, the PA system belts out cracking soul classics like Rescue Me by Fontella Bass and In the Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett.
Not many of the 100-or-so fans at the game will have had as long a history with this corner of Croydon as I have.
I grew up in the 1950s not much more than a long goal kick from the Mayfield pitch, at the cemetery end of Aurelia Road. In 1972 I was playing for Aurelia Athletic in the Surrey Combination League against Corinthian Casuals A. We lost 6-0 and had four players sent off, me included.
It’s not something to be proud of, but I kept the referee’s match report because of its unintentional hilarity.
Our offences were all for “foul and abusive language”, rather than dirty play. So foul that the referee couldn’t bear to write it in the body of his report and included a separate glossary of terms. Thus, the report reads that “N Bennett was sent off for calling me …. an ‘enclosed separately’.”
I don’t suppose, either, that today’s Rams fans know that their home pitch originally belonged to a company called Powers Samas, based in Aurelia Road, which produced mechanical accounting machines and was affectionately known as the “Acc and Tab”.
Polished product: Athletic have been working hard on their communications
It was taken over by ICL and they eventually became part of Fujitsu, of the Post Office sub-post-masters scandal infamy.
More widely known is that the owner of the previous incarnation of Croydon Athletic Mazhar Majeed, was given a prison sentence in 2011 for his part in the cricket spot-fixing scandal during an England v Pakistan Test match at Lord’s.
Majeed’s arrest triggered a series of dire events at the football club, swiftly leading to its collapse. Which is why the new, AFC Croydon Athletic, is a “phoenix” club, rising out of the ashes.
It’s a bright new future now for AFC Croydon Athletic, with lots more questions along the way.
Where did The Rams nickname come from? It must be a while since a ram grazed in the Croydon area.
Who is Charlie Bennett, who has a gate named after him at the stadium (and happens to share his name with my nephew)?
And how long will it take Athletic to climb all the way up the English football ladder?
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Maybe they should update the nickname from “The Rams”, to “The Trams”?
They’d be more than 25 years too late. Croydon’s longest established non-league club, Croydon FC, revels in its nickname of “The Trams”. Ding, ding!
The original Croydon Athletic was formed in 1986 as a merger of Norwood FC and Wandsworth FC (initially using the imaginative name Wandsworth & Norwood, renamed Croydon Athletic in 1990).
The Rams nickname was used by Wandsworth FC, due to a connection the club had with Young’s Brewery (Ram Brewery), which was based in Wandsworth.
Here’s a link to a blog post with images of a 1986 program from the newly merged Wandsworth & Norwood FC. You can see the ram badge on the front cover, although much updated, is still used by the club today.
https://thecoldend.blogspot.com/2011/06/classic-programmes-wandsworth-norwood-v.html
What a wonderfull story. I started playing cricket and football at the ground alongside the Acc and Tab round in 1956 for Thornton Heath Cricket Club and now unfortunately defunct. Neil Bennett used to play for the same club
so I got to know both him and his father.
It’s such a shame you havent mentioned the women’s team as they are doing just as well as the men, check out their results, they won a cup match on Sunday!