Braintree Town

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Braintree Town
Template: Infobox Football Club / Maintenance / No picture
Basic data
Surname Braintree Town Football Club
Seat Braintree
founding 1898 (as Manor Works )
Website braintreetownfc.org.uk
First soccer team
Venue Cressing Road
Places 4222
league National League South
2019/20 21st place
home
Away

Braintree Town (officially: Braintree Town Football Club ) - also known as The Iron - is an English football club from the city of Braintree , Essex, in the southeast of England . The club, founded in 1898, plays in the sixth class National League South .

history

Organized football was played in Braintree as early as 1879, but no club managed to establish itself permanently in the early years and in 1898, Braintree FC, the city's third club , disbanded . A majority of the players then switched to Manor Works , the operating team of the Crittall Manufacturing Company , a Braintree-based manufacturer of steel windows, from which the club also has its nickname The Iron , which is still used today .

The works team took over the pairings of the dissolved club Braintree FC in the North Essex League in 1898 and played with a short break until 1928 in the league, in which the championship was won three times. At the same time, from 1911 onwards, they played in the Essex & Suffolk Border League, in whose Premier Division they rose in 1925. As early as 1921, the club had renamed itself to Crittall Athletic to clarify the corporate connection. In 1928 the club changed the league and entered the next seven seasons in the Spartan League , in 1935 they were one of the founding members of the Eastern Counties League (ECL) in which they won the championship in 1936/37. They then left the league and played for one season in the short-lived Essex County League before returning to the ECL in 1938. After all competitions paused during the Second World War , they joined the London League in 1945 , as the ECL did not resume play until 1946. After a second place in the Eastern Division of the London League in the 1945/46 season, the club subsequently entered the Premier Division of the London League and achieved its best placement there with 3rd place in the 1947/48 season.

In 1952 they returned to the ECL and came because of the increasing professionalism of many clubs in the first two seasons not over placements in the lower third of the table. For the 1954/55 season, the club introduced the Profitum and finished sixth at the end of the season, but financially the season ended disastrously and the club gave up its professional status after just one season and withdrew to the more local Essex & Suffolk Border League. There the club placed itself exclusively in the upper half of the table in the following nine years and won the double from the league championship and League Cup in 1959/60, in 1964 they joined the Greater London League , in 1966 they moved to the Metropolitan League . After the club was renamed Braintree & Crittall Athletic in 1968 in an attempt to get more support from the local population, the ECL was rejoined in 1970.

In the mid-1970s, support from Crittall declined and the Cressing Road stadium, which had been in use since 1923, was at times so in need of renovation that some home games had to be played on nearby sports facilities. In 1981, the connection between Crittall and the club was finally broken and the club joined for one season as Braintree FC , before taking the current name Braintree Town in 1982. In terms of sport, things progressed steadily thereafter, in 1983/84 the club won the second championship title in the Eastern Counties League, and in the following season they successfully defended this title. In the following years there was no further championship, but with four second places between 1986 and 1991 they were still one of the top teams in the league. In 1991 the club was accepted into the Southern Football League , in whose second-rate South Division you played for the next five years. In 1996 they applied for a change to the geographically more favorable Isthmian League , but had to enter the fourth level within the league and thus played nominally two divisions lower than in the Southern League. Two direct promotions ensured that they played at the same league level again from 1998, and in 2001 they were promoted to the Premier Division of the Isthmian League.

By winning the league championship in 2006, they were promoted to Conference South for the first time, where they moved into the promotion play-offs as third in the first season and only failed in the final at FC Salisbury City with 0: 1, a year later you reach the play-off semi-finals again as fifth in the table. 2010/11 finally succeeded as a season champion, the first promotion to the Conference National , the top division in English non-league football . After staying in the middle of the table for several years, in the 2015/16 season, third in the table, made it into the play-offs, although the team, unlike many competitors, only consisted of part-time professionals. In the play-off semifinals they failed despite a 1-0 away win at Grimsby Town by a 0-2 home defeat after extra time. After this successful season, a large number of top performers and coach Danny Cowley left the club and as third bottom of the table was relegation to the National League South in 2017 . There they qualified as sixth in the table for the play-offs, then prevailed against Hemel Hempstead Town (3-2 on penalties), FC Dartford (1-0) and in the final again on penalties against Hampton & Richmond Borough and thus made it the direct ascent.

In the national cup competitions Braintree get no outstanding success. In qualifying for the FA Cup , they first took part in 1925/26, after the 1971/72 season they were excluded from the competition for twelve years. In the years after their return in 1984 they reached the last qualifying round four times, but qualified for the first main round for the first time in the 2005/06 season , in which they lost 4-1 to Shrewsbury Town . From 2012/13 to 2016/17 they took part in the main round five more times, in 2016/17 they advanced to the second round for the first time after a 7-0 first-round win over Eastbourne Borough , in which Millwall FC won 5-2 asserted. In the FA Amateur Cup , which was held until 1974 and in which Braintree regularly took part between 1925 and 1962, five main round participations were made, only in the 1937/38 season they were in the second main round after a 4: 2 win over Tooting & Mitcham (1: 3 against Dulwich Halmet ). In the follow-up competition, the FA Vase , in which you last participated in 1997/98, you reached the second round twice (1984/85 0: 1 in the replay against FC Collier Row ; 1987/88 0: 1 against Sudbury Town ) and also in the FA Trophy , in which they started for the first time in 1993/94, always ended in the last sixteen in the most successful participations.

successes

  • Conference South Masters: 2010/11
  • National League South play-off winners: 2017/18
  • Eastern Counties League champions: 1936/37, 1983/84, 1984/85
  • Isthmian League Premier Division champions: 2005/06
  • North Essex League champions: 1905/06, 1910/11, 1911/12
  • Essex & Suffolk Border League champions: 1959/60
  • Essex Senior Cup Winner : 1995/96
  • Winner of the League Cup of the London League: 1948/49, 1951/52
  • Essex & Suffolk Border League League Cup winners: 1959/60
  • Winner of the League Cup of the Metropolitan League: 1969/70

League affiliation

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Shaun Tyas: The Dictionary of Football Club Nicknames in Britain and Ireland . Paul Watkins Publishing, Donington 2013, ISBN 978-1-907730-25-2 , pp. 182 .
  2. ^ A b Mick Blakeman: The Official History of the Eastern Counties Football League 1935-2010 . Volume II. Propagator Press, Leeds 2010, ISBN 978-1-908037-02-2 .
  3. ↑ eadt.co.uk: Part-timers Braintree Town can secure a National League play-off place tomorrow (May 3, 2016) , accessed October 30, 2018
  4. ↑ eadt.co.uk: Braintree Town relegated, but boss Hakan Heyrettin “probably” wants to stay on (April 30, 2017) , accessed October 30, 2018