Woking

Jeff Chapple's Woking spent the mid-1990s beating clubs several divisions above them, and the FA Trophy is the reason anyone outside Surrey remembers it. Three wins in a row, 1993–94, 1994–95 and 1996–97, made Woking only the second club after Scarborough to retain the trophy back-to-back, with Cliff Walker and Steve Thompson carrying the side through those finals. The run sits alongside another afternoon the club still talks about: January 1991, a 4–2 win over West Bromwich Albion in the FA Cup, with Tim Buzaglo scoring a hat-trick against a team two divisions higher.

None of it was guaranteed. Founded in 1887, Woking nearly folded in 1908 over money problems, saved only after newspaper coverage of a Cup tie against Bolton Wanderers drew enough attention to keep the club afloat. The pattern repeated itself more than a century later. Chris Ingram bought the club in 2002 to pull it back from bankruptcy, and in 2024 Woking again edged towards administration under debts left by previous owner Drew Vaughn, before Todd Johnson's Cardinal Football Group took control that November.

The Cardinals have played home games at what is now the Laithwaite Community Stadium since moving there from Horsell Cricket Ground at the start of the 1922/23 season; it holds 6,036, with 2,500 of those seated. Among the players who came through the club, Clinton Morrisson went on to the Premier League and the Republic of Ireland, while Kevin Betsy left for Fulham and Wimbledon.

No fixture on the calendar carries more weight than the one against Aldershot Town. They call it the A31 derby, after the road linking the two towns, and it draws out the kind of edge that league position rarely explains.