FA Cup First Qualifying Round: Avro 0-2 Witton Albion
One of the great names of British aeronautical engineering is alive and well as the teams run out to the sound of an air raid siren and a Lancaster bomber, in Greater Manchester.
Avro, the aircraft manufacturing company which made the legendary World War Two flying machine, has long gone, but its football team remain, with a propeller mounted on the wall of their bar and a magnificent image of the RAF plane in their boardroom.
Witton Albion, who play a league below them and are travelling to face this powerful seventh-tier side on their 3G pitch in the FA Cup First Qualifying Round, do not feel quite so sentimental.
The club’s collective disappointment at drawing Avro was evident on the players’ WhatsApp group, soon after we’d left them celebrating their FA Cup Preliminary Round victory over Lancashire club Nelson.
That was the second part of our journey to Wembley told in 13 instalments, following a club as far as they go and then picking up with the team who knock them out, all the way to the final. ‘Avro away is as tough as it gets,’ groaned one of their staff.
Avro hosted Witton Albion in the FA Cup first qualifying round this weekend
A propeller mounted on the wall of Avro’s bar serves as a reminder of the aircraft manufacturing company which made the legendary World War Two flying machine
Visiting supporters watching the action n the FA Cup first qualifying round at Avro
Preparations on the Witton training pitch which they call ‘Little Bernabeu’ – a joke name which somehow stuck – do not seem to augur well, either, when we arrive to see how the Cheshire club are approaching this tie. A rainstorm of biblical proportions is battering them and water is pouring into the stadium corridor through an overflow pipe. Someone sends for a plumber.
After the drenched players have headed back to the dressing room, striker Freddie Garbutt, on whom many of Witton’s hopes will rest at Avro, wades up. He’s 22 and 6ft 6in: a player who Halifax Town and Fleetwood Town have both watched and for whom National League North side Chorley have lodged an unsuccessful offer. He also provides evidence of the fruits of intelligent, painstaking British scouting at the end of a grotesque Premier League transfer window in which so little of that quality has been evident.
A friend of Witton assistant manager Mike Alcock who’d first seen Garbutt in the Under 21s at nearby Runcorn Linnets told him to take a look. Alcock watched the young forward play multiple games for Pilkington FC in St Helens. He found a raw 21-year-old with good feet and heading ability who, just as significantly, seemed receptive to advice and didn’t have an entourage.
Even eighth-tier managers like Witton’s Benny Harrison will get agents cold calling them to push former academy stars, these days, but Harrison generally prefers young non-league prospects, like Garbutt, who don’t think the world owes them a living. ‘You get lads from academies who think they’re too good for this level,’ says Harrison. ‘And agents or interfering fathers, who can be the bane of your life. We’ve just had an ex-academy lad with us who expected to go straight into the team, didn’t and announced he was off. We don’t want that sort.’
Garbutt displays how bruising the game can be down here. There’s evidence of his having a tooth knocked out in an accidental clash with a team-mate against Liverpool side Vauxhall last season and multiple bruises to his ribcage. He also broke his nose last season. He must juggle his dreams of a professional football career with a job as a tennis and padel coach at the Grappenhall Sports Club half an hour away.
‘It can take its toll. Especially when we’re playing twice a week,’ Garbutt says of juggling the day job. He’s one of only two players Witton have signed to a contract, protecting his match fee if he’s injured and the club if someone else tries to sign him. But when he lost his place after the injuries, he couldn’t immediately regain it. Amid the myriad uncertainties, he holds on to hopes of a football career.
Honorary life member Malc Todd emptying a bin in the changing room before Avro play Witton
Witton’s striker Freddy Garbutt Garbutt is used to a bruising, challenging for the ball here
‘You have to take something from the levels other players have reached after starting in the non-league,’ Garbutt says, above the noise of the local brass band, who are practicing in the next-door room. ‘The fact that Jamie Vardy had that happen to him gives you a little hope, I guess. It’s a long way off – a dream – but I’m still only 22 and I do have ambitions.’
Garbutt arrives at Avro around 1pm, wearing a broad grin as he steps into the compact, modern ground, set within a former council estate on the outskirts of Oldham.
It might not be bucolic but grounds nestling with housing developments were a hallmark of the early rounds of Journey to Wembley, written by Daily Mail Sport’s Brian James with Brian Bould’s photography 50 years ago, which our odyssey is inspired by. There’s a beauty in that.
Avro were forced to move here because the stadium which they’d occupied for 80 years was sold off for housing by Oldham Council. It took the intervention of Sport England, who’d supported the club financially, to insist the council relocate them, and in an area thick with strong non-league sides, Avro find themselves trying to re-establish a fanbase.
They’re five miles from where they used to be and the nomadic existence has created a distinctly underdog mood. ‘People look down their noses at us and say, ‘They come from a council estate in Oldham,’ says the club’s Liam Bainbridge. ‘They have nothing else to shoot us with.’
In the boardroom before kick-off, Avro’s John Breedon, who’s supplying tea, tells how old bombers made at the local Avro factories often fly past on their way to airshows. ‘It connects us to the club’s past now the factory’s gone.’
Visiting striker James Steele gives Witton the lead – and Avro could not come back
Home supporters vent their frustrations during the second half of the game
Witton’s Kev Wright, whose work is the glue that binds the club together, admits to some nerves but his social media post encouraging a travelling support has worked, with the Witton contingent making up fully half of the 325 crowd. The talk all week has been of how this is the 60th anniversary of Witton making the First Round Proper. They were 2-0 up against Football League side Bradford Park Avenue in 1966, with a Witton team including goalkeeper Peter Mellor, who played for Fulham in the 1975 final, and Chris Nicholl, later an Aston Villa and Southampton legend, only to lose 3-2.
The players have been asked for intensity from the off and they go all out to land a first blow, knowing how the 3G surface can soon wear you down on a day with an intermittent brilliant sun like this. The bouncing ball doesn’t spin into touch as much, so there are fewer breaks in play. The hard, unyielding surface also jars. Teams who play on grass generally loathe 3G.
Garbutt is a part of the early pressure, winning aerial duels, putting his foot in, sending on passes from balls played into his feet, and it begins to tell. Avro don’t get a look-in. A loose ball is seized on by Witton’s James Steele, another young striker, who thumps it into the roof of the net. Tom Hoyle’s shot loops in after taking a deflection off a defender and inside 22 minutes Witton are 2-0 up.
This kind of deficit doesn’t usually affect Avro. A huge save is drawn from Witton keeper Cameron Terry, clawing a ball away from under the bar after it has pinged off the insides of his right and left posts. This will prove just as significant as those goals. Avro push on again in a second half during which Witton are marshalled by the game’s outstanding player – their Italian-born centre half Geffry Ebhote, a quiet but indomitable leader who joined them from Avro last year. There’s no way back. By non-league football standards, this is a huge victory.
Witton have dreams of being more than a football club. They aspire to get funding to lay several 3G pitches of their own and use what would be a relatively modest investment to create a community football facility for their area.
‘If football can find millions for individual transactions, contracts and agents, surely we can find a way to invest a fraction of that wealth to support the game at its foundations,’ says Kev Wright.
Defeating the Lancaster Bomber team just might provide the beginnings of a new momentum. The FA Cup and its magic have a way of making things happen like that.
