STEVE’S SUITED – AND LIVING DREAM
STEVE GARDENER thought he was just going for a pint with his dad and brother when he attended a meeting at the local ice rink to discuss restarting Romford Football Club.
Thirty-two years on and the Boro chairman will hop on the train just like he does every year to watch NonLeague Finals Day.
This time, however, he’ll be wearing a suit and a proud smile as wide as the Wembley arch.
“I’m just going through a different entrance this year,” Gardener laughs. “When you walk up Wembley Way and see the guys selling half-and-half scarves, flags and you see the supporters of course, when you’re involved in it, you do think, ‘What must it be like to go to Wembley to support your own club?’.
“For Non-League clubs, certainly at our level, the Vase is the only opportunity. You’re never going to make it to an FA Cup final and even when we were in Step 4, you’re not likely to make the Trophy final. It’s the Vase that gives you that opportunity.
“There are so many teams that go into it that to make it into the last two, you need a bit of luck along the way.”
Belief they could make the final only really came when they beat North Greenford United – who had knocked out their fellow Essex Senior League high-flyers Tilbury – in the quarter-finals.
Victory at Lincoln United last month sent the club into dreamland and it’s been busy ever since with a play-off campaign this weekend around all the Wembley organising.
“There’s so much to do you don’t think about,” Gardener says. “When The FA told us that Wembley sell the tickets you think, ‘Oh that’s good, if we haven’t got to do that there won’t be a lot left to do!’. But there is an incredible amount – passes, information you need to gather, protocol on the day. There is a specific ball for the game, you’ve got to decide what music to walk out to – all things you don’t associate with a game at our level. But it’s been really exciting to be part of that process.
“We’ve had some tough times. We groundshared for 31 of our 32 years. We’ve had some success but nothing that’s as high profile as this.
“It’s really good for the club and the supporters. It really gives you a lift. A Wembley showcase final is high up for supporters and players.
“The way I differentiate it between the play-offs is if we reach the play-off final – or any play-off final – the goal is to win the game. It’s not about the day, it’s do we win and get promoted?
“This will not be as much about the result. It will be about having that day out at Wembley. Taking photos, creating memories, going with friends, meeting people. That’s what it’s about.”
Gardener hopes Dave Howie and his wife Julie will join the club in the Royal Box on Saturday. Dave, now a retired policeman living in Norfolk, was the catalyst behind the club’s rebirth when he put an advert in the paper to say Romford was too big of a town to be without a football club.
“My brother was a groundhopper at the time and went to a lot of Non-League games – I was going to West Ham matches and didn’t quite understand what his football he went to was about,” Gardener said. “He said to me, ‘There’s a meeting at the ice rink Wednesday, they’re going to try and start Romford Football Club up again, do you want to go?’.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t think so’. Then on the day of the meeting he asked again, ‘Do you want to go to the meeting at the ice rink? Dad’s going to drive so we can have a drink’.
I said, ‘Alright then’. So we went and he asked what I thought on the way home. I said, ‘Yeah, very good, very passionate – Romford does seem a big town not to have a football team’. He said he didn’t think they’d get it off the ground because it’s a lot of hard work and no one will want to do that.
“So I rang up the guy who had started the meeting and said I’ve got some experience of sitting on committees and in meetings. He said, ‘Come round my house next week, we’re going to form a committee’. Roll forward 12 years later and I ended up being chairman ever since.”
Gardener says the whole club will enjoy their moment on the big stage.
“It’s for the volunteers,” he said. “The guy who does the kit, the guy on the turnstiles, the secretary, the vicechairman, the guy who sells raffle tickets, the guy who sells programmes, all those people are being catapulted to this day out