It took Aldershot 99 years and two football clubs to reach Wembley and for almost exactly as many minutes on a sun-kissed May afternoon they made themselves entirely at home there, outnumbering their opponents in the stands and outplaying them on the pitch on their way to claiming their first FA Trophy.
Second-half goals from Jack Barham, Dan Ellison and Josh Barrett earned the National League side a 3-0 win over Spennymoor Town of the National League North, and secured for their manager, Tommy Widdrington, a dream end to a season temporarily derailed when he had two strokes in November. Widdrington was back in the dugout in less than two months having acquired, as he put it in the buildup to this game, “a certain sense of perspective”. This was an excellent, mature performance, whatever way you look at it.
“People will forget about me. That’s what happens in football. But they’ll never forget how I’ve made them feel, how my team’s made them feel,” Widdrington said. “Football’s a tough old industry. It kicks you up the backside a lot more than it pats you on the back. I’m going to enjoy being patted on the back the next few days.”
For Aldershot, who sprang from the ashes of Aldershot FC in 1992, this was an emphatic win but, from the moment they accidentally left two members of their starting XI behind when they set off for Wembley, not a completely carefree one. Spennymoor had beaten three National League sides on their way to Wembley and there were moments when they threatened another upset, notably creating the best chance of the opening half only for Rob Ramshaw to send a miserably meek shot rolling into Marcus Dewhurst’s arms from eight yards. “Nine times out of 10 he’d have put that in the back of the net,” said Graeme Lee, the Spennymoor manager. “We’ve had our moments throughout this cup run, and today we didn’t take them.”
The game shifted three minutes after the interval when James Henry ran down the right and crossed, and though the ball arrived slightly behind Barham he somehow contorted his leg into a position to get some kind of contact on it. His touch turned out to be perfect, sending it rolling gently but unstoppably into the corner of the net. “That goal changed everything,” said Lee. “It deflated us and took the energy out of us a little bit, and we couldn’t get back into it.”
Aldershot arrived in poor form, having won just one game since Barnham’s last-minute goal earned them a 2-1 win over 10-man Woking in the semi-finals. But once in front they played with the cocksure strut of champions and in the 71st minute Ellison glanced in a header from a corner to make the game all but safe. Three minutes from time Barrett, their player of the season, produced the kind of goal all players dream of scoring in this stadium, a splendid left-footed volley from the edge of the area that dipped over James and into the corner of the net. Tyler Frost and Maxwell Mullins both missed chances to score a fourth as the Moors flung themselves forward in search of consolation.
Earlier Jamie Coyle, centre-back, two-time (Seniors) World Cup-winner, Whitstable player-manager and playing his final competitive game just days before his 42nd birthday, led his team from the back to a 2-1 victory over Whyteleafe in the FA Vase final, decided after extra time when, on a balmy, sun-kissed afternoon at Wembley, Leafe finally wilted.
Whyteleafe, another phoenix club, have enjoyed remarkable success since their creation in 2021 and when Daniel Bennett gave them a 17th-minute lead they seemed set for still more. But Whitstable have now lost only two of their past 28 games – and one of those was on penalties – and they fought back to eventually turn over the new Leafe.
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Daniel Colmer produced a couple of outstanding saves to keep his side in the game before the Oystermen finally came out of their shell in the second half, and seven minutes into it their top scorer, Harvey Smith, equalised from 20 yards, running on to Nathan Jeche’s precise pass and wrongfooting George Hill, who let the ball whistle just a yard or so to his right.
Leafe repeatedly threatened to steal victory but it was Whitstable who claimed it: in the 97th minute Albie O’Mara-Knapp crossed from the right and Ronald Sithole somehow scuffed his shot into a post. But he made up for it three minutes later when he ran on to the same player’s long punt forward, reclaimed the ball after Hill saved his initial effort, worked a better angle for a shot, and lashed into the roof of the net.