The Isthmian League (Part 2) 1995-2006

By 1995 the club had been homeless for 4 years, was in administration, playing home matches in front of dwindling crowds at Yeading’s isolated Warren stadium and competing in the geographically broad Southern League. The Board of Directors therefore took the decision to move the club across the pyramid to the more locally based Isthmian League, in so doing voluntarily relegating itself 2 divisions.

The Board took a second vital decision at the same time which was to dispense with Fred Callaghan’s services and persuade Yeading’s upwardly mobile young management team of Gordon Bartlett and Leo Morris to take on the challenge of restoring the club to a position much further up the football ladder.

A third important decision was made to relocate the club back much closer to its original Harrow home by agreeing a ground share with Edgware Town. It was hoped this would arrest the decline in home attendances which had, by the end of the 2nd season at Yeading, dwindled to around 200.

The club then spent the following 11 years in the Isthmian League, in the process achieving 3 promotions to become established in that competition’s Premier Division.

The 1995/96 season, competing in the Icis (Isthmian) League Division 3, saw a team too inconsistent to achieve promotion, but by and large too powerful for some of the opposition record huge wins, twice scoring 10 goals and 9 goals respectively.

A part of the 1996/97 Division 3 championship winning squad was Simon Garner, the ex-Blackburn Rovers record goal-scorer. By the mid to late 1990s, the establishment of the Premier League and its associated riches had resulted in very few ex-top professionals dropping down to non-league football, so acquiring Simon was a minor coup.

Having secured promotion in 1997 and then again in 1998, the club was denied a 3rd promotion on the bounce in 1999 when, despite having finished 3rd in Isthmian League Division 1, the required ground grading improvements at Edgware had not been completed in time and promotion was not allowed.

At the start of the 1999/2000 season the club decided to re-introduce a youth team set up which quickly bore fruit. Several players fed through over the next few seasons, most notably Marvin Morgan, who went on to play full time with Aldershot Town, Plymouth Argyle and Shrewsbury Town, and Jermaine Beckford, who enjoyed a highly successful professional career with, amongst others, Leeds United, Everton and Leicester City.

At the end of the 2003/04 season the FA announced that the Football Conference would be creating  North and South Divisions.  This had the knock on effect of the Isthmian league being re-configured into a Premier Division, Division 1 and Division 2. With the club achieving a 7th position finish in the Isthmian League Division 1 North, they would need to take part in a play-off with Dulwich Hamlet, who finished in the same position in Division 1 South, for the final slot in the new Premier Division.  In a dramatic match at Hamlet’s Champion Hill, Wealdstone scraped through on penalties following a 2-2 draw after extra time.

Midway through the 2002/03 season the club paid Hayes £1,000 for the transfer of their reserve forward, Richard Jolly, and so began an on-off association between club and player that would see Jolls make 296 appearances and score 171 goals before he retired from the game in 2015. That put him in second place of Wealdstone’s all-time goal-scorers behind the great George Duck.

Before the start of the 2005/06 season the club “upped sticks” again and moved to ground share at Northwood. At the same time manager Gordon Bartlett sought to refresh the playing side and persuaded Andy Lease to join him as the club’s joint manager.  Andy had enjoyed a successful period as manager of Cheshunt and brought across to the club a large number of his ex-charges from his pervious club.  The experiment failed to work as effectively 2 separate teams were created that failed to jell. Andy departed before the end of the season to take over at Potters Bar Town.

Despite the turmoil of the 2005/06 season, the twin spearhead of Richard Jolly and Jermaine Beckford went on a goal-scoring spree and by mid-January had scored 51 goals between them. Unfortunately the team were leaking goals at a rate even greater than they could bang in the goals. Following Jolly’s departure to Heybridge Swifts and Beckford’s to Leeds United, the final 11 league games yielded just 2 victories, but enough points had been gained to stave off relegation.

The club spent 11 seasons in its seconds spell as members of the Isthmian League playing 458 matches, winning 203, drawing 90 and losing 165, in the process scoring 791 and conceding 645 goals.

During the 11 seasons Wealdstone competed in the Isthmian League between 1996 and 2006:

• Fergus Moore retuned to the club for one more season in 2007/2008 and made a further 41 appearances.
• Richard Jolly made 165 appearances during his first spell with the club between 2003 and 2006. He returned for a loan spell in 2011, then permanently from 2011-2013 and finally for a brief spell in 2015. His final tally of goals for the club was 171.

Author Mick Fishman

[24062022]

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