The date is the 3rd of May 2021, and Concord Rangers have just taken league two side Harrogate Town to their limit at Wembley Stadium in the FA Trophy final. Fast forward two years and the Beachboys are staring right down the barrel of potential back-to-back relegations with a squad thinner than ever as they continue to fight on despite having limited resources at their disposal. So where did it all go wrong for Concord? Here we take a short dive into the recent tough times down at the The Aspect Arena.
Now before we go through that, we must give a little backstory as to how the club got to this point. Founded in 1967, The Beachboys enjoyed a meteoric rise up the lower leagues of English football and quickly found themselves in the Essex Senior League where in the 07/08 season, club favourite Danny Cowley took the side to promotion to the Isthmian leagues where it wouldn’t take long for the club to continue their rise as in the 12/13 season, the club were promoted to the Conference South for the first ever time in their history. Managers would come and go however Concord became a regular in the league as they kept their National League status for the next decade.
Sam Collins (now manager of Concord) against Mansfield in the FA Cup 2014 - photo from The Southend Echo
As mentioned previously, Concord enjoyed a thrilling cup run in the FA Trophy which took them all the way to Wembley. Little did the Beachboys know however that just the following day, the club would change forever as chairman Antony Smith would step down from his role after twenty-one years at the helm of Concord Rangers. A day later, manager Danny Scopes along with his assistant Lee Minshull would resign from their roles also. Now just days after the biggest day in the club’s history, the landscape of the club had completely changed.
Concord battling it out in the FA Trophy Final - Photo courtesy of The Non League Paper
With what promised to be a difficult season ahead, the club would promote from within as u21’s manager Chris Search would take control of the first team and was tasked with what seemed like the impossible job of keeping The Beachboys in the league. Concord would again do what they do best and defy the odds and stay up for another season. However, it would all catch up to them as the following season, they would be relegated back to the Isthmian Premier League for this season. The club have not made the best of starts either as just 3 wins from their first 15 has them bottom of the league with still plenty of games in hand on others around them as ongoing pitch problems alongside with the winter weather on the Island has had Concord struggle to get their games played.
So now Concord are faced with yet another task which would be deemed impossible by everyone except those involved with this great club as one thing that’s for sure, they will fight until the very end and give it their all in attempting to prove everyone wrong once again.
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