Horley Town

Six red cards in a single afternoon says most of what needs saying about Horley Town's fixture with Redhill: the two clubs have played the derby so often, and so sharply, that a 2024 meeting simply came apart in the referee's hands. Nobody at The New Defence needed reminding why it mattered.

The ground itself replaced The Defence on Smallfield Road, where the club had played since 1947, and the move in 2003 didn't dampen interest — a game against AFC Wimbledon that season drew 1,500 through the gate, still the record at a venue built for 1,800. The club had been through two grounds and two names by then: founded as Horley Football Club in 1896, it took in Gatwick Rovers in 1908 without giving up its own name, and only became Horley Town Football Club in 1975.

Silverware has come in short bursts rather than long runs — the Surrey Intermediate League either side of the war years, a league and cup double in the Surrey Senior League in 1976–77 — and the deepest FA Vase run, a fourth-round appearance in 2017–18, stands as the clearest marker of how far a Combined Counties League side could push. That ceiling shifted this year: beating Fleet Town 4–2 in the play-off final sent Horley Town up into the Isthmian League South East Division.

What the club is better known for, beyond Surrey, is what it sent elsewhere. Nicky Forster spent 1991 at Horley Town before Gillingham signed him, and from there he built a career worth more than 150 league goals across Brentford, Birmingham City, Reading, Ipswich Town, Hull City and Brighton & Hove Albion — a return no other player to wear the claret shirt has come close to matching.