Chesterfield

The 1997 FA Cup run still gets talked about at the SMH Group Stadium, because Chesterfield reached the semi-final that year, and a hotly disputed decision — a shot from Jonathan Howard that television replays showed had crossed the line, never given — kept them from a final against Middlesbrough. The team that got there had Kevin Davis up front, a striker who had made his debut in the League Cup at sixteen, one of the youngest players to appear for the club, and was sold on to Bolton Wanderers not long after that run.

Getting to that point had taken a rebuild of the club itself, not just the team. The original Chesterfield company had gone under in 1915, and the city council started a replacement, Chesterfield Municipal, to keep football going in the town. The Football Association pushed the council out five years later, and what came out the other side, in April 1919, was Chesterfield FC as it still exists — a club with two founding dates on its own records, 1866 for the name and 1919 for the legal entity that carries it now.

Money trouble has surfaced more than once since. In 2001 the club went into administration after debts run up under a chairman later convicted of fraud, and a supporters' society took it on. Relegation out of the Football League in 2018 brought a second administration and a points deduction to start life in the National League — the division the club won outright in 2024, going back up at the first attempt.

Gordon Banks passed through earlier than either crisis, 23 games in goal before Leicester City paid a then-record £7,000 for him in 1958, years before the World Cup. Dave Blackie's number is harder to catch up to: 617 league appearances between 1948 and 1967, still the most anyone has played for the club.

The ground itself changed in 2010, when the club left Saltergate, home since 1871, for the newly built stadium a short distance across town, where Chesterfield still play in blue.