Accrington ST

The story that sticks to Accrington Stanley is a milk advert, not a match. In 1989 a television campaign asked, "Accrington Stanley, who are they?" — a jibe at a club nobody had heard of, aimed at anyone who didn't drink their milk. The trouble was, by then there was no club to answer back. The original Accrington Stanley, formed as Stanley Villa in 1891 and renamed three years later, had folded in 1966, mid-season, its resignation from the Football League still one of the strangest exits English football has seen. The name the advert mocked had already gone quiet.

It came back anyway. A group re-formed the club in October 1968, and the rebuilding ran through non-league football for decades before results caught up with the ambition. John Coleman took charge in 1999, left, then returned in 2014, and it was under him that Accrington climbed out of the lower divisions altogether — promotion into the Football League in 2006, then, in 2018, a first League Two title. He left the post in 2024 and John Doolan has run the team since March that year.

There is no FA Cup or League Cup run to point to — the closest the club came was a fourth-round exit in 2016/17 — and the closest thing to a major final is a Papa John's Trophy defeat to Bolton in 2014, lost 3-1. What Accrington has instead is Lancashire itself: Morecambe across the county for the derby fixture, and older, bigger neighbours in Burnley and Blackburn Rovers whose shadow the club has spent its history stepping out of.

Home is the Wham Stadium, known for years as the Crown Ground, holding 5,450 with just over half the seats under cover. It sits in a small Lancashire town that answered the milk advert's question the only way that mattered — by staying in business.