Canvey Island

Villa Park settled it for Canvey Island in the 2000–01 season: a 1–0 win over Forest Green Rovers in the FA Trophy final, the goal scored by Ben Chenery, with Mark Stimson setting it up and taking the man-of-the-match award. It was the first time in twenty years that a club from the Isthmian League had lifted the Trophy. Three years later they were back in the final and lost, 3–2 to Hednesford Town, a defeat that came the same season they won the Isthmian League Premier Division outright and went up to the Conference National.

That promotion did not hold. Money ran short at the higher level, and within two years the club stepped back down of its own accord, into the Isthmian League Division One North, giving up the place it had just won rather than risk what it could not afford. The FA Cup run of 2001–02 belongs to the same period: wins over Wigan Athletic and Northampton Town took them to the third round, where Burnley ended it. A year earlier they had needed a replay to get past Port Vale before Southend United stopped them.

The ground on Park Lane has changed sponsor's name more than once — it traded as the Movie Star Stadium and the Frost Hire Stadium before its current name, Steve's Taxis Stadium — while the club's own name for its supporters has stayed put: the Gulls, in yellow and blue. Concord Rangers provide the local needle, the Island Derby.

They went up again in 2022, through the play-offs back to the Isthmian Premier, but that spell lasted three seasons: relegation returned them to the North Division for 2025–26, one level below where the Trophy-winning side of 2001 had already established itself a generation earlier.