FA Trophy - History

History

The competition was created by the Football Association in 1969 to afford semi-professional teams an opportunity to compete for the chance to play at Wembley Stadium. Fully amateur clubs took part in the long-standing FA Amateur Cup, but most of the leading non-league clubs made at least some form of payment to their players and were therefore ineligible to enter the Amateur Cup. The first winners of the competition were Macclesfield Town of the Northern Premier League, who defeated Telford United of the Southern League in the final. Northern Premier League clubs dominated the first decade of the competition, with Telford United the only Southern League team to break the northern clubs' hold on the competition. In the early years of its existence the competition struggled to achieve the same level of prestige as the long-established Amateur Cup.

In 1974 the FA abolished the distinction between official professional and amateur status and discontinued the Amateur Cup, and the Trophy soon had 300 entrants. This figure was gradually reduced until by 1991 only around 120 clubs took part. Amendments to the eligibility rules, linked to the development of the National League System mean that now just over 250 teams take part. In 1978 the FA moved the final of the Trophy to the Saturday immediately following the FA Cup Final, so as to give it a longer build-up and avoid conflict with club's league programmes, which had previously reduced the competition's prestige.

In 1979 the leading Southern and Northern Premier League teams formed the new Alliance Premier League, and teams from this league dominated the Trophy during the 1980s, although in the 1980–81 season Bishop's Stortford of the comparatively lowly Isthmian League First Division entered at the preliminary round and won twelve matches to reach the final, where they defeated Sutton United. Telford United's win in 1989 made them the second team to win the Trophy three times. Between 1990 and 2000 three more teams claimed multiple wins. Former Northern Ireland international Martin O'Neill, in his first managerial role, led Wycombe Wanderers to two wins, and Geoff Chapple managed Kingstonian to victory twice and Woking three times, all within the space of seven years. After Chapple's period of success, Mark Stimson became the first man to manage the Trophy-winning team in three successive seasons, when he led Grays Athletic to victory in 2005 and 2006 and repeated the feat with his new club Stevenage Borough in 2007.