Hampton & Richmond

Hampton F.C. began life in 1921 as a village-club outfit on the western edge of London, and it stayed close to that identity for most of the century, working its way through county and regional leagues before the amalgamation with Richmond in 1999 gave it the name it now carries. Wins came slowly at first: a Surrey Senior League title in 1963–64, then four Spartan League championships across the rest of that decade, the kind of run that builds a club's sense of itself even if the crowds stay modest at the Beveree Stadium, still known to regulars simply as The Bev.

The bigger step came much later. Promotion to the Conference South in 2007, under Alan Devonshire, coincided with the club's first appearance in the FA Cup First Round Proper, and for a side that had spent decades in semi-professional obscurity that was the season everything changed. Two play-off exits followed within three years, against Eastbourne Borough and then Hayes & Yeading United, the sort of near-misses that stick with a club longer than some of its titles do. A second Isthmian League Premier Division crown arrived in 2015–16 under Alan Dowson, who left and came back to the dugout in December 2025.

Money and ownership have mattered less to the story than the players who came through and moved on: Ben Wright's sale to Peterborough United in 2009 set a club-record fee, while Jamal Lowe and Nicke Kabamba both left for Portsmouth in 2017, proof that a club playing in the National League South can still produce players good enough for the Football League. Locally, none of that carries quite the weight of the Thames-side Derby against Staines Town, the fixture that still tells The Beavers most about themselves.

Few at the club are spoken of the way Alan Julian is. He kept goal there from 2020 until 2024, then stepped straight into coaching, the sort of progression supporters at a club this size like to point to as evidence the place still knows how to grow its own.