ASPIRE PERSPIRE ...INSPIRE
Spireites chief Croot reveals non-league Chesterfield has gone FA Cup crazy after drawing the European champions
CHESTERFIELD chief executive John Croot has revealed the euphoria which swept over the club when his non-league side were paired with Chelsea.
The fabled magic of the Cup was there for all to see as the minnows landed a plum thirdround tie at the home of the European champions.
Croot gasped: “Chelsea’s name came out and then David Seaman picked out ball 61. It was just incredible.
“Eight-times FA Cup winners, Champions League winners. It couldn’t have been any better really. It just means so much to this club, the supporters and the town.
“The response has been phenomenal. We’ve sold all our 6,000 tickets and I honestly believe we could have sold treble that.”
Croot is well-placed to understand the significance of 90 minutes at Stamford Bridge this evening having started at the club as a programme seller in the late Seventies, becoming a director to eventually forming and overseeing the supporters’ trust which took over the club.
He was there 25 years ago when the Spireites famously came within a whisker of beating Middlesbrough in the FA Cup semi-final in 1997 but lost in a replay and missed the chance to play... Chelsea.
No wonder he feels there’s a kind of “unfinished business” feel to it all after the club slid into administration within three years of their biggest day and then slipped out of the league.
They are now top of the National League and Croot (circle) said: “There were times when we didn’t know where the next pound was coming from but this match is obviously of great significance financially.
“A lot has happened since those two games with Middlesbrough. We went from being 22 minutes from the FA Cup final to dropping out of the League.
“We took 25,000 supporters to the semi-final which I believe was the biggest peace-time movement of people from Derbyshire.” Romance is fine but it does not pay the bills and the cash implications are enormous as Croot explained: “It’s a sell-out. Chelsea actually sold out their tickets before we had even put ours on sale which did surprise me a little because I wasn’t sure how their fans would view it.
“Financially, this game will help this club because we are owned by a charity and it will help this club for some time to come. It certainly gives us a comfort blanket. ”
Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku’s £300,000-a-week wages are on a different scale to anything at Saltergate.
Croot said: “It’s surreal. I would have thought that what some of their players earn in a month would cover the annual wage bill for this entire club – and that includes all the staff.”
He knows Chesterfield will be able to call on the support of almost anyone in the country who is not a Chelsea fan.
“We did get one ticket application from a man who had a NW London postcode,” said Croot. “We checked him out and there was no history of any connection with us at all.
“So we replied telling him he was not going to get one and when we told him we had sold out, he seemed delighted.
“He said he was a Tottenham fan and just wanted to be there to cheer us on if we had struggled to sell our allocation because he hated Chelsea!”