THE MAKING OF ENFIELD TOWN
IT'S been 23 years since Dave Bryant and Roger Reed sat outside a meeting room in Brentwood waiting to hear if Enfield Town had been accepted into the Essex Senior League – and now the country's first fan-owned club have become one of Non-League's biggest success stories.
Bryant was a key figure, with the regard he is held shown by the renaming of their home for the rest of this season to the Dave Bryant Stadium after stepping down last month.
Bryant watched his first game as a sevenyear-old in 1968 – a 4-1 win against Woking.
There was a mild flirtation with West Ham but by the early 70s he was an Enfield regular watching games with friends.
It was a group including current vice-chairman Paul Millington, Ciaran Glennon, who now runs the bar, and former director Mark Emblen.
“I followed Enfield all through my life,” Bryant says. “You're going home and away, kids come along and you might just go to home games, a few away – different times so it was a bit like that.”
In the late 90s, owner Tony Lazarou announced he wanted to sell their Southbury Road home.
A potential deal was in place with the council with the idea to relocate to Cheshunt.
“For me, at this level of football, if you're not playing in the town you represent, you have no connection to the town,” Bryant says.
“I thought back to the days in the early 70s when I lived on the Willow Estate, a mile-and-a-half from the ground. You'd set off and all the kids would come out of their houses along the way. By the time you got to the ground there was ten or 12of you. It was brilliant.
“I thought, ‘No one is going to walk down the A10 and cross the M25! If we move there, full stop, we're not Enfield anymore.”
Tiny shed
The fans got together to make their voices heard with regular stories on the front page of local papers as they challenged the council and Lazarou to think again and ensure any move is withing the borough of Enfield.
The council formed a taskforce – that included Bryant as supporters'porters' rep along with Millington – to come u p with a new site.
Ironically, the Towners' current home was dismissed on planning grounds but as time went on, the fans' focus shifted from stopping the move to Cheshunt to thinking about a takeover of Enfield.
Supporters Direct attended meetings and negotiations as the fans became a formal trust with 400 members.
“With hindsight and with what I know now – I was just a wet behind the ears fan who didn't know about running football clubs, although others with us did – we would have floundered,” Bryant says. “Those negotiations ran out for whatever reason and we were faced with the
HONOURED:Dave Bryant ultimate decision. We'd half mooted it around but it was, ‘Well, if this doesn't come off, the only option for us is to start again.
“We talked to Supporters Direct about it. I have to say, they were quite shocked because it had never been done before. I remember at a supporters meeting we held their rep said to me privately, ‘Are you really sure about this?'
“But we started exploring that route. By then we'd got a group of people together who knew about running football clubs. Roger Reed, who had been secretary of the old Enfield FC when they were one of the top teams in the land, Roy Butler, who had been vice chairman for many years. These guys knew more than anybody.
“That's always been my idea. If you don't know it, you surround yourself with people who do and you work things out together.
“We ended up for mulating this plan to start as Enfield Town.”
They found somewhere to play in the borough of Enfield at Brimsdown Sports and Social Club as momentum gathered ahead joining the Essex Senior League in time for the 2001-02 season.
“Without them we wouldn't have had a base,” Bryant says. “It was literally an open field with a tiny shed that accommodated 50 people.
Community
“We applied to join the Essex Senior League. It was a drop in leagues but amongst our number we knew people who knew about that level of football.
“Again, the Essex Senior League were very generous because our facilities didn't really meet their standards.”
A temporary perimeter fence would be put up before every game and taken down after.
Their first pre-season friendly against Brimsdown Rovers saw 350 people turn up.
On their league debut they celebrated a 3-1 win over eventual title winners Leyton in front of more than 500 spectators.
T h e Towners f i n – ished r u n – ners-up in their de- but season before winning the league next year, but couldn't go up because of their ground.
In 2004-05, after four seasons in the league, they won promotion to the Southern League East for one season before switching to the Isthmian Division One North.
Six years later, after missing out in the play-offs the previous year, they were on the up again to the Isthmian Premier where they've been ever since.
Moving into their own QEII Stadium in 2011 has moved been a huge catalyst.
Near misses for promotion to Step 2 have followed but this season sees Gavin Macpherson's side right in the promotion race.
And this week they even won in Europe, picking up their second Fenix Trophy victory by beating Danish side BK Skjold 4-1 in front of more than 300 travelling fans.
“I remember going to the Essex Senior League AGM at Brentwood and they sent me and Roger Reed outside while they discussed whether they could take us,” Bryant says.
“When I was chair for the first year, we weren't much more than a first team. We've now got about 25 different teams – men's, women's, boys, girls, disability teams, cerebral palsy teams, teams who work with young offenders, an active community development charity that does amazing work.
“We're really embedded in our community. Enfield Town football club is for anyone who chooses to make Enfield their home.
“They could have lived there all their life, they could have arrived from somewhere else in the world last week. If they want to come to Enfield Town, they are very welcome.”
