Match Preview

This weekend, weather permitting, Grays Ath return to league action at Tilbury against our old friends from Heybridge Swifts.

The original football club in Heybridge was founded in the late Victorian era and spent many decades playing in the various county leagues, winning a number of divisional and cup titles. In 1971, they became founder members of the Essex Senior League, which they won three times in a row in the early 1980s, leading to promotion to the Isthmian League. In the following decade or so, the First Round Proper of the FA Cup was reached on three occasions, each time losing to Football League opposition.

Since then, it has very much been a case of what might have been for the Swifts, with several losses in promotion playoffs and when the end-of-season knock-out was won in 2018-19, a complicated mathematical formula again denied them promotion as part of the pyramid restructure. A year earlier the FA Cup proper had been reached again, and this time the Swifts scored their first ever goal at that stage of the competition, courtesy of one Sam Bantick !

The Swifts moved to the current ground at Scraley Road in 1966, the site having literally previously been a carrot field. Their previous ground of many seasons had been lost two years earlier in order to build a supermarket. Such are the vagaries of non-league football.

The earliest meetings between our two clubs were in the 1990s, in a series of cup encounters, most of which Heybridge won. Since then, there have been around 30 meetings in the Isthmian League, with honours relatively even, with most games tightly contested. Last season, a 1-1 draw at Parkside was followed by a 1-0 win for the Blues at Heybridge.

This season, the Swifts are again challenging for league honours, currently sitting in the final playoff place. Ten wins from eighteen fixtures is a healthy return. And they arrive on Saturday defending an eight match unbeaten run in the league.

So expect a strong challenge, as Blues look to return to winning ways after several postponements.

Come on you Blues.