Stratford Town

On a Tuesday night in November 2021, Stratford Town shared a pitch with Shrewsbury Town in the First Round Proper of the FA Cup, the furthest the club had ever gone in the competition, and 2,800 people packed into a ground built for exactly that many. It was the largest crowd The Arden Garages Stadium had ever held, and it arrived for a club that had spent most of its life several divisions removed from anything televised.

The club did not start out as Stratford Town at all. Formed in 1941 as Stratford Rangers, it took its present name eight years later, and it took its nickname later still: The Bards, chosen through a fan vote, a nod to the Stratford-upon-Avon-born William Shakespeare rather than to anything on the pitch.

Most of what the club has won came at county and step-below level — Midland Combination titles in 1957 and 1987, a Warwickshire & West Midland Alliance championship in 1954, an Aston Villa Cup in 1953 — the sort of honours that build a club up rather than announce it. The 2012/13 Midland Alliance title and the 2019 Southern League Cup mark the closest it has come to breaking into wider non-league recognition.

Several players moved through Stratford on their way to or from careers well above this level, among them Leroy Lita and the Montenegro international goalkeeper Matija Šarkić. In 2022, one of the club's own academy graduates, Olly Clifford, took the less-travelled route out, leaving for a scholarship at Oklahoma City University.

Matches against Leamington carry the weight of a county rivalry, billed locally as the Warwickshire derby, with further needle reserved for meetings with Nuneaton Borough and Redditch United. None of those fixtures has drawn a crowd to match the one that turned up for Shrewsbury: 2,800, a full house, and a record that still stands.