Bishop's Stortford

A meeting at the Chequers Hotel in Bishop's Stortford settled the matter of a football club for the town. Eleven years later the same club stood among those who founded the Hertfordshire County Football Association.

Financial trouble cost Bishop's Stortford their old home, Rhodes Avenue, sold off in 1997, and for eighteen months afterwards the club had no ground of its own, groundsharing in turn with five different sides before settling at Woodside Park in 1999. The pitch there now holds 4,525, with 525 seats, under a club still known as The Blues for the shirts, shorts and socks it has always worn.

The 1970s and early 1980s produced the club's two biggest trophies: the FA Amateur Cup in 1973–74, won 4–1 against Ilford, and the FA Trophy in 1980–81, won 1–0 against Sutton United. No other club has taken both competitions. The following two seasons brought the deepest FA Cup run in the club's history, a third-round tie in 1982–83 reached by beating Reading and then Middlesbrough, whose replay drew 6,000 to Bishop's Stortford, matching the attendance for a match against Peterborough United a decade earlier.

St Albans City and Harlow Town remain the fixtures that matter most locally.