By Layth Yousif 

at Hayes Lane

 
YOU could tell it was going to be a special occasion when the merest hint of a rainbow emerged to welcome the nation’s newest league team, following a brief sprinkling of rain in deepest south London on Tuesday evening.

Hayes Lane, Bromley was the scene. 

Where Andy Woodman’s Ravens hosted AFC Wimbledon in the first round of the League Cup. It also happened to be their maiden home game as a league side in this welcoming club’s 132-year history. 

While the handsome grey horses in a nearby field may have been impervious to such a momentous moment, Bromley’s homely club shop was doing a roaring trade before kick-off, and not just in souvenir printed match programmes, either. Even if it’s a sign of the times that despite such an important fixture, the club produced a double header edition, to save on printing costs.  

For in a quirk of fate that football always seems to generate, the only true Dons in English football return on Saturday, for their League Two fixture in Bromley’s first home league match at this level. 

On Tuesday, they were queuing to the back of the club shop for all manner of items — from Bromley branded bottle openers to slate coasters, to notebooks, pens and, of course, white replica shirts. And why not? Everyone wanted a piece of Bromley on Tuesday. 

Even the nearby railway station, Bromley South, had hung a sign that proudly announced the area was the home of the new league club. 

It was no wonder there was ermine in front of the Hayes Lane press box with the arrival of the local mayor, resplendent in red, gold jewellery glinting in the early evening sun, amid a restorative cooling breeze, following the day’s fierce heat that topped 30°C in this part of the world. 

And while the car park may need resurfacing at some stage in their shiny new future, not to mention the dilapidated corrugated iron on which a sign directed travelling fans to the away end, you could tell this is a community club with a big heart and even bigger dreams. 

Yet for the teak-tough Woodman, never a coach to rest on his laurels, last season’s promotion triumph belongs in the records books, when he said: “We need to move on from that as a club — we need to win football matches, continue to win football matches, that’s my message to the players.”

As befits a new league club, money has been spent wisely upgrading the ground that housed a capacity 3,677 on Tuesday evening, with Saturday’s first home league game confirmed as a sellout.

Terraces and stands have been upgraded, while fans have been provided with additional food outlets lending a pleasant environment to consume their beers and burgers, while still keeping the essence of this unprepossessing club. 

And despite the women in the club shop unsure whether to keep open or lock a connecting door from the shop to the stand, the mood was leavened — even in the ever-growing queue — when a kind gentleman offered to buy the ladies a bottle of wine to thank them for their efforts. 

Bromley, who had such a stellar season under the highly rated Woodman when gaining promotion to the EFL from the National League last term, enjoyed a pleasing debut last weekend when emerging from North Yorkshire on Saturday with all three points, after beating Harrogate Town to post a win in their first-ever league match. 

Despite the visitors dominating Tuesday’s early stages as the home side acclimatised to such heady heights when competing in a trophy that the mighty Liverpool lifted last term, boss Woodman, the highly rated former Arsenal goalkeeping coach, who left the north London giants to progress his career as a manager, saw his side go ahead in the 19th minute when his No 19, Levi Amantchi wrote his name into the record books.

The lively attacker emphatically slotting home Kosovan left-back Besart Topalloj’s fine cross to make the net bulge as the home support erupted in jubilation to make it 1-0. 

Of course it wasn’t to be against the side with a far bigger budget. 

Fairytales are harder to come by than that — Wimbledon know that more than most — as former Charlton stalwart and Spurs youngster Johnnie Jackson’s side levelled shortly afterwards. Dons’ No 10 Josh Kelly drilling a low shot from the edge of the area that flew past Ravens’ keeper Sam Long to make the score 1-1 five minutes later. 

As an absorbing match progressed, Wimbledon grabbed a winner in the second half when Joe Piggot fired home from close range to put the Dons ahead just after the hour mark, to ensure the visitors would earn the right to host Premier League side Ipswich Town at the new Plough Lane before the month is out. 

However, a bullish Woodman, always engaging company, said after the match: “We were good for it in a lot of areas, but we lacked a little bit of belief in the final third and that was the difference.

“We don’t have the riches of Wimbledon and the other clubs, we have the smallest budget in the league.

“We don’t have the money to go and buy all the top players, we have to produce our own which is what we have done before,” saying: “We have another game Saturday.”

They certainly do, when these two south London clubs face each other again in League Two action, in a clash which will be ebullient newcomers’ Bromley’s first-ever home game in the EFL.