Yeovil Town FC:

In 1997 Yeovil Town FC were playing in the Isthmian League, the sixth tier of English men’s football, and 16 years later they reached the Championship and locked horns with some of England’s footballing giants.

Now, in 2022, the Somerset club are just one tier higher than they were in 1997 after a rollercoaster journey into and out of the EFL.

The Glovers have spent all but 16 of their 126 years in non-league football, but when they spent eight consecutive seasons in League One it seemed like they would be a comfortable EFL side.

However, following their meteoric rise from non-league to the lofty heights of the second tier, the plummet back to the Conference was even quicker.

Yeovil Town had now seemingly eased their way to the third tier under Johnson, but as is customary when a club is overachieving, he was poached by local rivals Bristol City.

The Glovers’ first season in League One resulted with a respectable 15^th place finish, but in the 2006-07 season, only their second at this level, Yeovil once again defied the odds and finished fifth under Russell Slade, therefore qualifying for the play offs.

Yeovil were drawn against two-time European Cup winners Nottingham Forest in the play-offs. This was no random cup draw though. Yeovil had finished the league season just three points behind the sleeping giants and earnt their right to have a shot at Championship promotion.

The first leg ended in a nervy 2-0 loss at Huish Park and Forest thought that they already had one foot in the Wembley final. In fact, Forest were so confident they could hold onto their 2-0 lead at home that they had already begun planning the travel arrangements to Wembley and measuring the players’ suits for the final.

It ended up being one of the worst nights in history for Forest fans, and one of the best for the 1097 travelling Yeovil fans.

The scores were level at 1-1 (3-1 on aggregate) with nine minutes remaining, but an Alan Wright own goal and a Marcus Stewart header impossibly levelled things up for Yeovil to bring it to extra time.

Both sides notched early extra time goals leaving the aggregate score level at 4-4 until the 109^th minute when Arron Davies fired in to give Yeovil a famous win and send the Glovers to Wembley for the first time.

The 27,000 Forest fans were stunned at what had just happened, as were the Yeovil fans, but for wholly different reasons.

Barrett, who was at the City Ground that night, said:

“However many tens of thousands expectant people on that night by the side of the River Trent all turned and suddenly realised that this plucky underdog that nobody had heard of a few years ago were going to put them out and stop them getting promoted again.”

It didn’t end in complete joy for Yeovil however, as they lost 2-0 at Wembley to Blackpool who found themselves in the Premier League just three years later.

After that memorable season, Yeovil became a stable League One side under both Slade and club legend Terry Skiverton. They finished between 14^th and 18^th every season and seemed at home in the third tier and were now part of the furniture.

Barrett said: “The hope was that we were prepared off the pitch to bounce back and be in a position to use what we’d gained in terms of experience and finances wisely.

“For maybe the only time in his Yeovil career, Gary Johnson couldn’t reform that squad again. And it was tough, it was really tough.”

Yeovil lost the majority of their core squad that had won promotion to and played in the Championship. Many players saw their futures in that division and opted to leave the club, leaving Johnson with an enormous rebuild.

While Yeovil were comfortable in League One for the eight seasons prior to Championship promotion, in the 2014-15 season they struggled badly, finishing bottom for the second consecutive season.

Yeovil suddenly fell into League Two and started their return to the fourth tier badly and it looked as though a third successive relegation might be on the cards.

Darren Way, who was a key player in the Conference and League Two winning side, was appointed manager and galvanised the squad to avoid the drop in 2015-16.

However, things didn’t improve and Yeovil battled relegation in League Two for four seasons finishing 19^th, 20^th, 19^th and eventually 24^th.

Years of hard work to transform Yeovil from a traditional non-league club to a Football League club were undone and their fate was sealed at Northampton in 2019 as they were held to a 2-2 draw, despite being 2-0 up which would have given them a good chance of survival.

Barrett said: “It was a ticking time bomb unfortunately. We had such a high turnover of players for multiple reasons and when you have that you have a lot less unity of the groups. It all spiralled out of control and finally it cost us.

“It summed us up because we were two nil up on the day and we just had to keep winning. But we couldn’t do it. It summed up years of doing all the work, getting in a great position and then throwing it away. It summed up Yeovil for the last five years in about 85 minutes.”