Man, you couldn’t make this shit up! What began as a very promising showing at the pre-season Ardingly College Tournament, ended with us just staying up after using over 50 different players and two managers.
This had been Frank Coles’ first chance to put a squad together pre-season and really go for promotion back to the Ryman Premier Division, as we went into the first league game away at Barton Rovers things looked good. We had kept most of the strong players from the previous term and added some good new ones, like Carl Bartley the imposing forward, Anthony Turner on the wing and Danny Smith and Vlad Lazic at the back. Although we took our time in beating Barton 2-1 there was a real sense of optimism as we returned to the Lane for our next two games.
Three defeats followed as what looked like a bunch of very talented individuals failed to gel as a team.
The FA Cup brought us some joy away to Hungerford, we really turned on the style playing 3-5-2 and won 2-0. With the team now playing well together we drew 1-1 with Bedford and beat Yeading away 4-2 and Ashford (Middx) 3-1 in the League Cup. Then again we began to stutter in form, Met. Police knocked us out of the FA Cup and after a reasonable draw with Harlow, we handed Leatherhead their first point of the season throwing away a 3-0 lead! A much more determined looking Ravens destroyed Walton 4-1 away, but a week later we were humiliated at home by Northwood 0-4.
Frank had seen enough and decided to make changes, to the disbelief of many of us he released Bartley, Rose, Davey, Billiness and Turner in the space of a week. A very different Bromley side took the field away to Romford. We came back twice to win 3-2, and again by the same scoreline the week after at home to Uxbridge. It seemed that the doubters had been proved wrong for a while. We sneaked by Ashford Town 1-0 AET in The Kent, before returning to Yeading for the FA Trophy. A win here would see a trip to Burton Albion in the next round and all the HLUs were up for that one! It would raise the clubs profile, give them a good payday and give us a great day out! We just had to beat Yeading!
We didn’t! In fact we failed to ever really get going against 10 men and in front of less than 100 people. This was so bad, even worse than the embarrassment of losing to Div 2 Met Police in the cup. I along with many others was fuming.
Results and performances were increasingly poor and attendances for home matches dropped below a 200 average. Braintree beat us 5-0, Chesham then rolled us over out of the League Cup and took Ernie Cooksey with them. Top of the table Boreham Wood beat us at the Lane 4-2 and the squad that was now playing for Bromley was a shadow of the one that had started the season. We didn’t even have enough subs for some games. Going into the away game at Thame Utd the mood around the club was bad, Eddie Davies promised the fans a big new development real soon. I saw ex-Dulwich manger Dave Garland at the game and began to realize what he meant.
Frank’s team put up a great display against a team that hadn’t lost all season and were edge out 1-0. Ironically 10 year veteran Ian Rawlings was man of the match, he had joined the same time as Frank Coles in 1990 and they were both soon to be gone…
Skullduggery was the headline in the local papers. Garland had been given the Bromley job two days before the Thame game, Frank was only told the day after. Despite Frank’s failing as a manager everyone was sad to see him go and not happy about his replacement. The general opinion was to give Garland a chance, but the mood was still too dark to get behind the team as he took charge for the first time on the Tuesday at home to his previous employers and our rivals Dulwich in the London Cup. We lost 6-3 and didn’t even have a sub available. I was too depressed to speak!
By the Saturday at Bishop’s Stortford we at least had a full squad, we had signed 5 new players and all were involved. The HLU’s spent the game singing for the team and calling to Frank and Rawlo to be granted the testimonials they were more than due. The club still hasn’t honoured this.
We beat Stortford 1-0 thanks to debutant Leon Dillon, but he was soon to leave and so were many more who came and went thru the revolving door at Hayes Lane over the next half of the season. This truly was a false dawn for BFC. I can hardly bear to list all those awful defeats and blows to the good name of Bromley that came after the appointment of Garland. We beat Slough 1-0 in the FMC, but then went on to lose the next five in a row including a 6-0 home defeat by Braintree that no one will ever forget. He played two players he had never seen before in the game! The exodus of players from BFC included virtually anyone you could recognise as a Bromley player. Rawlo, Dave Gray, Jamie Kyte all went and top scorer Mark Tompkins was also rumoured to be on his way, but later decided to stay. A brief revival occurred in February with a 2-2 draw at Worthing and wins over Leatherhead 1-0 and away at Aylesbury 4-1. The Aylesbury game though brought football back into perspective, club legend and all round decent man John Fiorini collapsed at half time and later died in hospital. He was only 60. The club as a whole was rocked by this and it left everyone in deep shock.
We exited the FMC 2-0 at Oxford, it was too soon after John’s death for anyone to care. Fittingly we won our next home game 2-0 over Yeading and also beat Romford 1-0 and Dartford 3-1aet in the Kent. The winning goal came from the brilliant defender Dean Forbes who ran 70 yards to score!
Were we on the up? Was Garland turning it around?
Well, no! From March to mid-April we lost every game, eleven in a row. The worst a 2-0 home defeat against bottom club Barton in front of less than 100! The last one being a surreal 7-0 thrashing at Dover on a Thursday night in the Kent Cup Semi. Everyone who went still had a laugh, it was that type of night out.
We had five games left and were now staring relegation square in the face. This just wouldn’t have happened under Frank, or virtually anyone else in charge for that matter!
I can’t tell you how it happened, but it did. The bizarre mixture of rejects that was the Bromley squad suddenly gelled as a team and began to fight for the club. All the credit goes to the players for this. They drew 1-1 with Thame, coming within 2mins of beating them, then got a point at Staines 1-1 and two days later beat Stortford 3-0 at home! This would have seemed impossible two weeks earlier, one win from the next two games would mean safety!
We didn’t even have to suffer the trauma of a last day relegation battle, a well fought win at Bognor 2-1 meant we could sit back and enjoy the final game at home to Wealdstone. The team played with out a care in the world and recorded a brilliant 4-0 victory in front of a good crowd. This was against a team that had wiped the floor with us only weeks earlier. Why couldn’t it have all been like this!
The team that Garland finally assembled actually looked worthy of wearing the Bromley shirt. The old guard of Andy Silk, Tommo and Danny Harwood and the new awesome talent of Dean Forbes, Justin Bowen and George Gibson came together well.
So that was season 2000/01, optimism, disappointment, grief, worry and relief. I’d like to give respect to all the Hayes Lane Ultras who shared the experience with me over the months. We travelled sometimes in hope, sometimes in fear and sometimes out of a strange sense of duty, to so many odd little places all over the South East and gave our support to Bromley FC.
Once a Raven always a Raven.
I still really don’t know what to expect next season!
Or maybe I do!
Cheers!
Col.