Diamonds: A goal's best friend

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

Rushden and Diamonds were as high as League One in 2003/4 but now play in the eighth tier of English football.

If this club is Icarus, then its fall has been prolonged, crashing through the canopy and never quite hitting rock bottom, which gives a sense of purpose.

“If I have an ambition it is for Diamonds to get promoted back to the EFL and for Cobblers to be relegated into non-league” says an older fan whose support goes back to the merger of amateur sides Rushden Town and Irthlingbrough Diamonds in 1992.

He’s talking about Northampton Town FC down the A45, the bigger brother in Northants football, there to be taken down a peg or two.

While AFC Rushden and Diamonds were playing Morecambe in the FA Cup Fourth Round qualifying, Northampton, subject to a recent big money takeover by a Brazilian group including the former Selecao legend Pato, were winning at Grimsby in League 2.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Rushden art deco bingo hall.

There’s still a healthy bit of needle between the pair of clubs, which is apt given both team’s connection to the shoemaking industry, that powered Northamptonshire for generations.

Whilst Northampton, home of Church’s and Crockett and Jones, knows its way around a stretch of leather, its football club’s nickname is the “the Cobblers” reflecting the act of shoe repairing rather than than manufacture.

Rushden was itself a shoemaking stronghold, hosting over 60 shoemaking companies by the late 19th century. John White Footwear Limited of Rushden made over two million pairs of boots for soldiers during World War 2

“They wanted shoes more than they did men!” said John White in his memoirs about trying to enlist in the army but being sent to stitch soles to uppers.

Rushden and Diamonds wealth in its 90s rise came through the Dr. Martens empire of the late Max Griggs.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. AFC Rushden and Diamonds supporters.

Ironically, Griggs had been on the board at Northampton Town FC for fifteen years in the 80s before a parting of ways saw him take his money to bring together the aforementioned Rushden Town and Irthlingbrough Diamonds, showing the Cobblers what he was really made of.

The result was a redevelopment of Nene Park, the former home of Irthlingborough Diamonds, into a venue, which while not quite palatial, was certainly well appointed with its 6500 capacity, fitness suite, all-weather pitches and Diamond Centre playing host to Premier League snooker.

While Rushden and Diamonds were beginning their stratospheric rise from the Southern League Midland Division in 1992, Northampton fans were rattling buckets outside their beloved but decrepit County Ground after going into receivership.

Diamonds made the ultimate insult by signing Northampton’s captain “Razor” Ray Warburton in 1998, although in reality the fee of £100,000 helped the Cobblers coffers, who by that time had moved to the Sixfields Stadium, but needed the dosh.

Rushden fans dined on the famous Double Diamond burger while Cobblers supporters made do with rollover hot dogs.

Yet, there were always questions of how Rushden and Irthlingborough, even today with a population or around 40,000, was going to sustain a football league level club, with Griggs getting on in years and so it came to be that the arc levelled off and a descent began.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. AFC Rushden and Diamonds shirt with Dr. Martens logo.

Griggs didn’t so much as sell his asset as hand it over to the newly formed supporters’ trust in 2005, again, ironic given that the first trust had been created at Northampton in ‘92 when he started his Diamonds endeavour.

Despite, gifting the club to the fans’ group and offering two years worth of financial contributions, it became clear that the cost of running a football league club and maintaining Nene Park was too costly, leading local businessman Keith Cousins to acquire Rushden and Diamonds in November 2006.

While the ascendancy had been swift, the fall was sickeningly lurchy, despite reaching the Conference play-offs under Justin Edinburgh in 2010, the finances were not stacking up, leading to the catastrophe of expulsion from the Football Conference and the winding up of the club in 2011.

You can understand then, that Diamonds fans took some time to exhale on Saturday as they took in the FA Cup clash against Morecambe at a packed Hayden Road, which they share with Rushden and Higham United FC, somewhat a footnote in the story.

Nene Park was demolished in 2017, one of English football’s most cautionary follies but Rushden and Diamonds, now owned again by its supporters as an “AFC” under a Community Benefit Society are still doing just that, providing football relief to the people around the rolling hills of this part of Northamptonshire.

Rushden itself, does looks like a town that contracted after the loss of the vast majority of its shoemaking industry. They still make shoes at Grensons and Sanders and some heritage Dr. Martens lines at nearby Wollaston but your 19th Century “Cordwainer” wouldn’t recognise much of modern day Rushden with its art deco bingo hall boarded up.

One of the most successful business on the high street is “House of Venom” reptile housing selling “everything from bearded dragons to alligators and corn snakes”. Most of the shoppers are at the Rushden Lakes out-of-town retail park, where its muted Marks and Spencers frontage instead of the glare of lizard tanks.

Down the road at the Rose and Crown pub on the high street, they are offering free samples of food to shivering passers by, caught out by the sudden drop after warm October temperatures and somewhat suspicious of halloumi with no fee.

As with the national trend, various pubs such as the Wheatsheaf, the Unicorn and the White Horse have closed in Rushden, meaning that drinkers are limited to the few that remain and in particular the Wetherspoons.

The garden there has the picturesque vista of a hand car wash and a man exercises his large breed pooch while he waits for the suds to be rinsed.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. AFC Rushden and Diamonds scran.

The town feels like a dog chew toy being thrown around, but still squeaking.

At Hayden Road, the conifer trees rose above the pitch like ship sails and queues for the bar billowed so much that you wouldn’t know where it began and ended, much like Rushden and Diamonds’ flight in football.

Morecambe FC, themselves a former EFL club, didn’t bring much sunshine to their forlorn travelling fans, struggling with Diamonds’ front foot football from the off.

It was former Northampton Town attacker Matty Warburton who doubled Diamonds’ lead in the 24th minute with a cute free-kick worthy of a higher level.

At full-time, with Diamonds into the FA Cup first round proper after a 2-1 win, fans floated onto to the pitch in less of an invasion and more of a show that the wings have started to waft again in East Northamptonshire.

Meanwhile, in Monday’s draw, only numbers and 61 and 28 will count in these parts, those of AFC Rushden and Diamonds and Northampton Town FCs.