Match Preview: The Bridge v Woodford Town
This is a tough one…as if things are not tough enough already, our next ESL Prem fixture is against 2nd-placed Woodford Town. You could say Woodford are having a good season, mainly because they are!

The Woods have 35 points from 15 games and are four points behind Stanway Rovers with a game in hand. They have won 11, drawn 2 and lost just 2 of that 15, scoring 33 and conceding 8 for a +25 GD. The 8 goals conceded make The Woods defence the best in the league with only Takeley coming close with 11.

Woodford Town – season 24/25 – The Last Six seven
(most recent results first)
Spoiling you a bit here as this result was last night!
Buckhurst Hill 0 Woodford Town 3
An Errington Challenge Cup win for The Woods in the local derby match. Goals came from Marko Protic, Sonny Shilling, and David Gokou-Siakouri, all in the second half.

Ilford 0 Woodford Town 2
A fairly straightforward away win, although 0-0 at half-time, with the second-half goals coming from Nathan Sollosi in the 55th and 64th minutes.

Woodford Town 0 Saffron Walden Town 1
A slightly surprising home defeat but SWT have been in good form too so only slightly and not a major surprise. A Correy Davidson goal after 57 minutes won the game against a Woodford side including ex-Bridge players Sam Owusu and Michael Agboola.

Stansted 0 Woodford Town 4
The Woods visited Stansted and were flying (sorry!), leading 2-0 at half-time through Miles Mitchell-Nelson and Nathan Sollosi. Sollosi added his second in the second half and Luke Steele rounded off the scoring.

Woodford Town 2 FC Clacton 2
If the SWT result goes down as surprising, this one goes down as shocking! Georges Kebi put the home team 1-0 up before Ben Sargeant equalised just on half-time. Nathan Sollosi, again, made it 2-1 before Ben made it 2-2 with a 62nd-minute penalty.

Woodford Town 6 White Ensign 0
An uncharacteristic thrashing for Ensign as title-chasing Woodford storm into a 4-0 half-time lead. Goals from Georges Kebi, Miles Mitchell-Nelson, David Gokou-Siakouri and Josh Banfield are followed by two more in the second half from Marko Protic and Nathan Sollosi (of course!).

Woodford Town 1 Athletic Newham 0
A tough old game this one that I watched live on one of the streaming channels (get a life, who me!?). James Jewers 3rd minute goal was the winner in this feisty affair that saw four yellow cards and a 98th-minute red for Woods keeper Manny Agboola. I think most of the managers and coaches got cards too but there were so many it was hard to keep up!

Goalscorers:
Nathan Sollosi 7
David Gokou-Siakouri 3
Micah Jackson 3
Four players with 2 each.

First Team Squad:
Player Appearances
1 David Gokou-Siakouri 12
2 James Jewers 12
3 Sam Owusu 12
4 Marko Protic 12
5 Nathan Sollosi 12
6 Emmanuel Martins 11
7 Josh Banfield 10
8 Miles Mitchell-Nelson 10
9 Sonny Shilling 10
10 Manny Agboola 9
11 Michael Agboola 9
12 Kahlil Kirwan-Meade 9
13 Marcus Painter 9
14 Micah Jackson 8
15 Dion Johnston 7
16 Georges Kebi 7
17 Luke Steele 7
18 Eddie Allan 6
19 Chaynie Burgin 6
20 Jaydon Charles 4
21 Conor Tyrrell 4
22 Billy Karby 3
23 Andre Anderson 2
24 Max Harbrow 2
25 Enock Soganile 2
26 Tashan Richmond 1

Last Season:
Woodford Town finished 2nd behind champions Tilbury and were beaten 5-4 on penalties in the play-offs by Sporting Bengal United after the game had finished 1-1. The Bridge finished in 12th.

The teams met twice during the season.
Game one was on the 8th of September 2023 and was a draw at Ashton Playing Fields. The game finished 1-1 with (my mate!) Jon Evans scoring for The Bridge and Jaedon Phillips equalising in the 92nd minute.

Game Two at Lower Road on the 15th of December 2023 was also a draw but this time it was 0-0.

Club Facts:
Founded: 2002 (originally 1937)
Ground: Ashton Stadium, Woodford Green
Chairman: Tony Scott
First Team Manager: Shane Baptiste
First Team Coach: Tom Jewers
First Team Physio: Sufyan Mukhtar

Club History
Woodford Town Football Club are based in Woodford in the London Borough of Redbridge. They are currently members of the Essex Senior League and play at Ashton Playing Fields (Ashton Stadium).

Story of 'The Woods' since 1937
THE EARLY YEARS
Woodford Town Football Club was established in 1937, and were founder members of the Delphian League. In 1950 we lost 7-1 to Colchester Utd in the 4th Qualifying round of the FA Cup in front of a ground record of 7000 at Snakes Lane. The superbly named Johnny Bee stung our illustrious opponents into action with a sensational 9th minute strike before all hopes of a famous giant killing were cruelly swatted in the second half.

Amongst noticeable players to grace the white Woods shirt was a certain Johnny Haynes soon to leave an indelible mark on the game at Fulham and England and later given legendary status as Football’s first £100 a week player at a time when wages regularly failed to reach the minimum wage of the time.

In 1961 we switched to the Metropolitan League, before joining Division One of the Greater London League in 1967. We left the Greater London League at the end of the 1968–69 season and rejoined the Metropolitan League in 1970.

The 1970's
At the end of the 1970–71 season, we joined Division One South of the Southern League but left after a single season in which we finished bottom of the table. We joined the Essex Senior League in 1976, before switching to the Athenian League in 1979.

The 1980's
We rejoined the Southern Division of the Southern League in 1982 where illustrious Tottenham Hotspur International duo Jimmy Greaves & Joe Kinnear were among a number of eye-catching signings, albeit in the twilight of their careers.

Amazingly we played in the Anglo-Italian Cup in 1986 losing 4–0 to Piacenza in the semi-final and then 3–2 to Merthyr Tydfil in the 3rd Place play-off, the former game featured on Italian TV.

After finishing third in 1986–87 and reaching the first round of the FA Cup for the first time, we dropped back into the Essex Senior League at the end of the season.

Despite the disappointment Woodford had put themselves firmly on the football map succumbing only to a very late Colin Foster goal against Leyton Orient in the aforementioned match in front of another bumper gate at Snakes Lane, a game after which star striker Paul Williams was transferred to Charlton Athletic for an undisclosed sum after an eye-catching display on a bumpy surface very much of the day.

The 1990's
In 1993 we lost our Snakes Lane ground and transferred to Division One of the Spartan League, which merged into the Spartan South Midlands League in 1997, with Woodford placed in the Premier Division South.

However, we left the league in 1998 and dropped into the London Intermediate League, before returning to the Essex Senior League in 1999. We remained in the league until being voted out in 2003 after finishing bottom of the league for three seasons in a row.

The 2000's
In 2017 we returned to the Essex Senior League reverting back to our original name – Woodford Town Football Club.

Despite nomadic spells at Broxbourne Borough and Harlow Town ‘The Woods’ began to attract interest for their attacking, youth-based playing style which saw Teenagers Ryley Scott and Jaden Brissett picked up by Ipswich Town and Brentford respectively and their unique fan base establishing itself amongst the most loyal and noisiest in Non-League Football.

The link with football history didn’t stop there either as Woodford Town won a thrilling FA Cup tie v London Colney in front of 375 fans at the Harlow Arena on 31st August 2020. The singular Friday night fixture goes into the record books as the only time The FA Cup has ended and started in the same month, a slice of football trivia unlikely to be repeated.

In 2023–24 Woodford were runners-up in the Essex Senior League, qualifying for the promotion play-offs. They were knocked out at the semi-final stage, losing 5–4 on penalties to Sporting Bengal United after a 1–1 draw.

Ground
The club played at Waltham Forest's Wadham Lodge ground in Walthamstow until 2011, when they moved to Coles Park in Haringey to ground-share with Haringey Borough. In 2016 they moved to the Terence McMillan Stadium in Plaistow before starting a groundshare with Broxbourne at Goff's Lane for the 2017–18 season. The club relocated to the Harlow Arena prior to the 2018–19 season and announced their intention to return to Woodford at Ashton Playing Fields for 2020.

The club were due to move into Ashton Playing Fields in November 2020, however new lockdown measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic in England postponed the club's return to Woodford. The stand at the new ground is named the 'Jas Athwal Stand' in recognition of Jas Athwal, the Labour Party politician and Leader of Redbridge Council, for his contribution to bringing the club home to Woodford. On 13 August 2021, Woodford played their first game at the stadium, losing 2–1 against Stansted in front of 822 spectators.

Records
Best FA Cup performance: First qualifying round, 2013–14, 2023–24
Best FA Vase performance: Second round, 2011–12, 2015–16, 2022–23, 2023–24

Well, where do we start…
• 16th versus 2nd
• The best defence in the division: 8 conceded v Hullbridge 32 conceded
• The Woods on the road: Won 7, drawn 1, lost 1
• Current form is shown below – ouch!

You know that I try to look on the bright side but that’s not easy on this occasion but you never know!