| Forest Green Rovers 17:46 - May 14 with 14540 views | Monahoop |
Well done to them getting promoted to the Football League via the promotion playoffs. Is this the smallest town or place to have a team playing at this level? What kind of crowds do they get now. I remember when they got promoted to the Conference in 1999 they were dead certs for relegation. They have been there until today.
Forest Green. Sounds like an idyllic English country village with cricket green, duck pond, pub and thatched Tudor cottages. It's probably anything but of course. Just my imagination. |  |
| There aint half been some clever bastards. |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 10:20 - May 15 with 3557 views | stevec |
I thought Forest Green was near Dorking and Surrey had it's first Football League team.
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| Forest Green Rovers on 10:25 - May 15 with 3554 views | Northernr |
| Forest Green Rovers on 10:12 - May 15 by qprphil |
I've been to the old ground a few times when they used to play Gravesend & Northfleet, (now Ebbsfleet Utd ) I think the club is bank rolled by Dale Vince, who has ploughed millions into it. Now watch for Ebbsfleet next season, they will be a force after gaining promotion to the Conference National after beating Chelmsford 2-1. Ebbsfleet were down 1-0, and with a man sent off at the end of the first half, came back to score two goals in the last 15 mins. |
They've got a bit of money behind them as well now right? Vague recollection of somebody telling me this while drunk at the Forest game. |  | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:05 - May 15 with 3521 views | switchingcode |
| Forest Green Rovers on 21:19 - May 14 by Gloucs_R |
Right... Let's have this straight.... They have been bank rolled through the league's by a rich (albeit echo friendly) entrepreneur... Think man city or Chelsea of non league. He also is a vegan and won't sell meat products at the ground.
Stroud is 5 mins up the road so don't buy into this small village crap.
Hope they get smashed by both Cheltenham and Swindon. |
What's wrong with a club being bankrolled by a fan,you've been bankrolled by a West Ham fan.He's not talking about building a new ground he's actually doing it.Fair play to them.Btw Stroud is hardly a big city about 13000 population.I have been to the ground a couple of times and was surprised they are moving as it's very modern and as they only get about 1500/2000 crowds it's capacity is over 5000. |  | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:22 - May 15 with 3508 views | noauthority |
Live 20 'minutes walk across the valley to the ground. Been to watch them around 5 times since moving here. They lost to Bristol Rovers in play off semis two years back and grimsby i. Final last season.
Very steep hill up to ground. Mixed area, not ethnically but culturally. Far from land rover driving, fox hunting, property portfolio land. Though, like anyway there are some.
As mentioned, few miles south of Stroud. Area is what i like to call 'rural urban'. Beuatiful countryside, population surprisingly dense (country bumpkins after all!)
Attendances are around 1k. Plans to move to new ground have been afoot for years. Think it's now going ahead between Stroud and the M5. Dale Vince, a former new age raver / traveller, owns local eco power company ecotricity. Yes has bankrolled the, but really so what, wouldn't most clubs want that?
Ground is actually situated next to Forest Green area of Nailsworth, the towns council estate. Claim to fame for the club was reaching the FA Vase Final in early eighties where they played a match against a Nottingham miners side. Said match was marred by crowd trouble, really!
Some googling led me to discover, back then, Forest Green had a 'firm' calling themselves Forest Lawn Elite Men, FLEM for short. Notorius for ambushing away fans with lawn mowers outside the tea shop in town. All true, except obviously the bit about lawn mowers.
Vegan food only at the ground, supposedly very good, though oddly last time i was there all i could get during a boring second half was some soggy chips in curry sauce. Pitch is eco friendly, electrical car charging ports outside ground. Good luck to them i say.
Been hoping for a FGR v QPR cup game since moving here three years ago. More likely now. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:40 - May 15 with 3490 views | gordanoR |
A cup game there would suit me too, I'm about a 20 minute drive away & I'll be even closer if they move to J13 of the M5 |  | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:47 - May 15 with 3482 views | Gloucs_R |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:05 - May 15 by switchingcode |
What's wrong with a club being bankrolled by a fan,you've been bankrolled by a West Ham fan.He's not talking about building a new ground he's actually doing it.Fair play to them.Btw Stroud is hardly a big city about 13000 population.I have been to the ground a couple of times and was surprised they are moving as it's very modern and as they only get about 1500/2000 crowds it's capacity is over 5000. |
We have gone from a family club, which many other supporters in London had a soft spot for us...........to being despised for exactly this reason. Spending more money than we could make.
FGR are the Chelsea of non league. |  |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 12:26 - May 15 with 3458 views | CiderwithRsie |
Glad to see some slightly better informed posts coming in from noauthority and others, especially the point that Forest Green is in fact a council estate. Stroud is in fact quite an industrial town (as is Dursley the other nearest town).
Fact is that what Vince is doing at FGR has absolutely nothing to do with Chelsea or Man City, both of which had large attendances however sh*t they were and were therefore ripe for turning into money machines. FGR aren't, never have been and never will be. If you want to know what is going on there, there are two much closer models, one of which is pretty close to home, the other a lot more dubious.
The first one is our own Jim Gregory, taking on a club that had always been an also ran, because he knows that a little bit of smart investment here and there can make a big difference. Back then a used car dealer could do that with a 3rd Div club, nowadays it takes a multi-millionaire and he has to start in non-league, but that's the way football has gone. Unlike Gregory, whose big strength was that he genuinely knew about football, Vince wasn't even a fan - he was asked for a bit of cash to keep the club going when they couldn't pay the bills, being a decent bloke he stumped up and then got hooked in. His USP is the idea that you could run a club a bit differently, have healthy food, power the lights by solar, not always go for the lowest common denominator (the plans for the new ground are beautiful).
The other more iffy precedent is MK Dons - spotting a part of the country where there's no established club, recognising that football is so deep in the culture now that if there's no club people will just watch ManU or Them instead, and creating a club from nothing. At least he hasn't stolen another club to do it, but he does want to move the whole shooting match out to the nearest junction on the M5 which will take it out of Forest Green itself, and he obviously wants to pull in fans from places like Yate on the edge of Bristol. If he can do that and fill the new stadium the thing becomes self-financing so long as they don't go crazy and try to get into the Championship or something.
I'm not entirely comfortable about the second half of that but if you look hard you'll see it isn't too different from what Fernades wanted to do for us, except Vince is actually doing it with a degree of competence.Fact is that I now see kids walking around in FGR shirts and when I first moved here the only football shirts you saw on kids were from the top of the Premiership and in my book its an improvement | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 12:47 - May 15 with 3433 views | CamberleyR |
| Forest Green Rovers on 12:26 - May 15 by CiderwithRsie |
Glad to see some slightly better informed posts coming in from noauthority and others, especially the point that Forest Green is in fact a council estate. Stroud is in fact quite an industrial town (as is Dursley the other nearest town).
Fact is that what Vince is doing at FGR has absolutely nothing to do with Chelsea or Man City, both of which had large attendances however sh*t they were and were therefore ripe for turning into money machines. FGR aren't, never have been and never will be. If you want to know what is going on there, there are two much closer models, one of which is pretty close to home, the other a lot more dubious.
The first one is our own Jim Gregory, taking on a club that had always been an also ran, because he knows that a little bit of smart investment here and there can make a big difference. Back then a used car dealer could do that with a 3rd Div club, nowadays it takes a multi-millionaire and he has to start in non-league, but that's the way football has gone. Unlike Gregory, whose big strength was that he genuinely knew about football, Vince wasn't even a fan - he was asked for a bit of cash to keep the club going when they couldn't pay the bills, being a decent bloke he stumped up and then got hooked in. His USP is the idea that you could run a club a bit differently, have healthy food, power the lights by solar, not always go for the lowest common denominator (the plans for the new ground are beautiful).
The other more iffy precedent is MK Dons - spotting a part of the country where there's no established club, recognising that football is so deep in the culture now that if there's no club people will just watch ManU or Them instead, and creating a club from nothing. At least he hasn't stolen another club to do it, but he does want to move the whole shooting match out to the nearest junction on the M5 which will take it out of Forest Green itself, and he obviously wants to pull in fans from places like Yate on the edge of Bristol. If he can do that and fill the new stadium the thing becomes self-financing so long as they don't go crazy and try to get into the Championship or something.
I'm not entirely comfortable about the second half of that but if you look hard you'll see it isn't too different from what Fernades wanted to do for us, except Vince is actually doing it with a degree of competence.Fact is that I now see kids walking around in FGR shirts and when I first moved here the only football shirts you saw on kids were from the top of the Premiership and in my book its an improvement |
Isn't their success more in the model of Rushden & Diamonds, formed from the merger of two small non-league teams with no history or fanbase to speak of and bankrolled back then by Mr Doc Martens himself, Max Griggs? |  |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 13:09 - May 15 with 3397 views | switchingcode |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:47 - May 15 by Gloucs_R |
We have gone from a family club, which many other supporters in London had a soft spot for us...........to being despised for exactly this reason. Spending more money than we could make.
FGR are the Chelsea of non league. |
Sorry,when I read your post I thought people in glass houses and all that.The trouble is most clubs spend more than they make,mine included. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 14:45 - May 15 with 3312 views | Gloucs_R |
| Forest Green Rovers on 13:09 - May 15 by switchingcode |
Sorry,when I read your post I thought people in glass houses and all that.The trouble is most clubs spend more than they make,mine included. |
Its fine mate.
On the flip side of FGR...you have Gloucester City. The ground was flooded 10 years ago and they've been nomadic since. Last couple of years sharing with Cheltenham and this season sharing with Evesham Utd....22 miles away.
Hopefully they are coming back to Glos next year, finally. How they havent gone bankrupt and fallen through the leagues is a tribute to the owners and supporters. | |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 14:57 - May 15 with 3305 views | R_from_afar |
This thread reminds me of this mighty team which qualified for the Europa League in both 2013-14 and 2014-15. They come from a village too, population.....941 (according to the 2002 census). That would be like the pub team from my estate qualifying. Perhaps I should ask them for a trial (the pub team or the Macedonians, I'm unemployed and so not particularly fussed either way).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK_Horizont_Turnovo
RFA |  |
| "Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1." |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 15:37 - May 15 with 3267 views | switchingcode |
| Forest Green Rovers on 14:45 - May 15 by Gloucs_R |
Its fine mate.
On the flip side of FGR...you have Gloucester City. The ground was flooded 10 years ago and they've been nomadic since. Last couple of years sharing with Cheltenham and this season sharing with Evesham Utd....22 miles away.
Hopefully they are coming back to Glos next year, finally. How they havent gone bankrupt and fallen through the leagues is a tribute to the owners and supporters. |
To be honest it's tough for any football club in the area where most support the rugby and the only football shirts you see about are Liverpool Man U etc.I would have thought dispite all this Gloucester FC would have the biggest potential of the 3 main football clubs. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 15:41 - May 15 with 3265 views | smegma |
| Forest Green Rovers on 10:20 - May 15 by stevec |
I thought Forest Green was near Dorking and Surrey had it's first Football League team.
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SAme name, different place. I used to go camping there when I was at secondary school. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 16:11 - May 15 with 3243 views | qprphil |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:47 - May 15 by Gloucs_R |
We have gone from a family club, which many other supporters in London had a soft spot for us...........to being despised for exactly this reason. Spending more money than we could make.
FGR are the Chelsea of non league. |
There maybe a few Ebbsfleet fans that will disagree that FGR are the Chelsea of non league football. Our wealthy Arab owner is building us a new stadium at the cost of 15 million for starters, stage one complete in 2 months. The pitch and sprinkler system is in place, and has played like a billiard table all season. Our owner is also involved in the new Disney type theme Park, but like any other wealthy owner you pray he doesn't get bored. He was close to tears on Saturday walking around the pitch. There are quite a few people investing in lower league clubs at the moment. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 09:59 - May 16 with 3129 views | aston_hoop |
| Forest Green Rovers on 14:57 - May 15 by R_from_afar |
This thread reminds me of this mighty team which qualified for the Europa League in both 2013-14 and 2014-15. They come from a village too, population.....941 (according to the 2002 census). That would be like the pub team from my estate qualifying. Perhaps I should ask them for a trial (the pub team or the Macedonians, I'm unemployed and so not particularly fussed either way).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK_Horizont_Turnovo
RFA |
Team in the top flight in Poland at the moment from a village of something stupid like 750 people. smallest top flight team in Europe I think, remember reading an article about them at some point last year! |  |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 10:22 - May 16 with 3116 views | smegma |
These arguments about new owners buying success makes me laugh. Most fans criticise owners for not putting their hands in the pockets in most leagues. As soon as an owner invests they get accused by opposition fans of being nouveau riche, no history etc....I would love to have billions thrown at us and start winning things.
At the moment I'd settle for winning an FA Cup game. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 10:35 - May 16 with 3105 views | hubble |
| Forest Green Rovers on 21:55 - May 14 by CheshireR |
Former R's youth team player Emmanuel Monthe was playing in defence for them today.
Well done to him and Forest Green Rovers. |
I knew his time would come. |  |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 10:35 - May 16 with 3104 views | Gloucs_R |
I'd like to believe that non league was a but more pure and fair.....obviously its not but it will be the end of football if more non league teams start investing money they dont have. | |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 11:43 - May 16 with 3064 views | gobbles |
| Forest Green Rovers on 21:19 - May 14 by Gloucs_R |
Right... Let's have this straight.... They have been bank rolled through the league's by a rich (albeit echo friendly) entrepreneur... Think man city or Chelsea of non league. He also is a vegan and won't sell meat products at the ground.
Stroud is 5 mins up the road so don't buy into this small village crap.
Hope they get smashed by both Cheltenham and Swindon. |
What's wrong with vegan-only food at least everyone can eat it. I'm a vegetarian and have been to plenty of grounds where the only food that I can eat is a bag of crisps. |  | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:59 - May 16 with 3050 views | smegma |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:43 - May 16 by gobbles |
What's wrong with vegan-only food at least everyone can eat it. I'm a vegetarian and have been to plenty of grounds where the only food that I can eat is a bag of crisps. |
Same here. Why can't clubs sell things like sarnies instead of dubious bits of meat disguised as burgers/ hot dogs. Please don't anyone say 'but they sell cheese and potato pies'. They are gash. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 12:09 - May 16 with 3040 views | SonofNorfolt |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:59 - May 16 by smegma |
Same here. Why can't clubs sell things like sarnies instead of dubious bits of meat disguised as burgers/ hot dogs. Please don't anyone say 'but they sell cheese and potato pies'. They are gash. |
But they sell cheese and potato pies. |  | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 12:35 - May 16 with 3016 views | Gloucs_R |
| Forest Green Rovers on 11:59 - May 16 by smegma |
Same here. Why can't clubs sell things like sarnies instead of dubious bits of meat disguised as burgers/ hot dogs. Please don't anyone say 'but they sell cheese and potato pies'. They are gash. |
errrr Crisps, choc bars, cheese and potato pies....bloody veggies, always moaning.  | |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 14:11 - May 16 with 2964 views | R_from_afar |
| Forest Green Rovers on 09:59 - May 16 by aston_hoop |
Team in the top flight in Poland at the moment from a village of something stupid like 750 people. smallest top flight team in Europe I think, remember reading an article about them at some point last year! |
Good call, and here they are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruk-Bet_Termalica_Nieciecza
RFA | |
| "Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1." |
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| Forest Green Rovers on 15:53 - May 16 with 2927 views | terryb |
| Forest Green Rovers on 10:35 - May 16 by Gloucs_R |
I'd like to believe that non league was a but more pure and fair.....obviously its not but it will be the end of football if more non league teams start investing money they dont have. |
Forest Green & the owners have only copied what happened at Morecambe & Fleetwood.
The biggest difference is that FGR have upset many along the way. Why I don't know, but It would appear that it applies nationwide, even to the extent that many non national league clubs supporters have no time for them.
Many other clubs have had owners that have promised the same, but left when the money ran out & left the clubs in administration. That, at least, doesn't look on the cards at FGR. | | | |
| Forest Green Rovers on 22:26 - May 16 with 2846 views | distortR |
| Forest Green Rovers on 15:53 - May 16 by terryb |
Forest Green & the owners have only copied what happened at Morecambe & Fleetwood.
The biggest difference is that FGR have upset many along the way. Why I don't know, but It would appear that it applies nationwide, even to the extent that many non national league clubs supporters have no time for them.
Many other clubs have had owners that have promised the same, but left when the money ran out & left the clubs in administration. That, at least, doesn't look on the cards at FGR. |
Maybe it's the inherent conservatism. with a small c, of football fans. Eco-stadium, vegan food? At a football match? It ain't proper!
I'm demanding the right to eat meat at their stadium, and i've been a veggie for over 30 years! | | | |
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