Handy Guide to: Brentford FC

As I trawled through tinterwebs trying to find a solitary fact or stat to substantiate the ludicrous “Will Hughes Is Great" claims made by the baby boomer generation from their index-linked gilt-plated guilt-free ivory towers, I was shocked to discover we’re playing some outfit called ‘Brentford FC’ this coming Good Friday.

Never having heard of this minnow outfit I have fastidiously **combed the superwebway to discover what I could of this phenomena and share the results below such that you may delight and educate your friends down at the pub.

Here we are then:

Brentford FC are the football club of Brentford, in that Landan Tahn. Incorporated in 1889, five years after the birth of football in a manger in Derby, by the members of Brentford Rowing Club to give its members something to do over the winter. It was a toss-up between football and rugby and, with rowers tending to come from the more cerebral elements of society, obviously egg-chasing lost out to the beautiful game.

Their nickname is ‘The Bees’ due to their name beginning with ‘B’ which kinda undermines my first observation.

Dean ‘Smudger’ Smith is the current Brentford manager. Over an illustrious career, Smithy was relegated with Walsall, Hereford, and Sheffield Wednesday, and was unsuccessful in every play-off he ever took part in. Notwithstanding those statistics, Spart and VC10 maintain that Deano Smith was the best midfielder they ever saw play the game.

Brentford play their home matches at Griffin Park, supposedly named for the pub on the corner of the ground where they used to change. Griffin Park is unique in having a pub on each corner of the ground, and The Griffin was used to film scenes for Green Street, where Elijah “Frodo" Wood convincingly portrayed a soccer hooligan. Brentford have received dispensation to leave in the terracing within the ground beyond the League’s usual three year limit for promoted clubs due to plans to move to a new 20,000 seater stadium in 2019.

Alan “Dredd" Judge plays for Brentford; ‘the one who got away’ according to Griff. As a proper midfielder, during 2015-16 Judge scored 14 times with 11 actual (not pretend) assists to his name and was widely-lauded by his peers, receiving numerous commendations and PoTY nominations at league and club level. Judge’s season was ended prematurely when was inexplicably assaulted by a jealous lesser player from East Anglia, however he did go on to win the supporters and players PoTY awards in addition to being named in the Championship team of the year.

The Thirties were Brentford’s best years, securing promotions that saw them finish 5th in their first season in the top flight in 35/36, and sixth in the following two seasons. And then the Germans got all feisty and we had to go slap them around a bit, much to Brentford’s chagrin.

After the war in a rather unfortunate coincidence, Brentford bombed. They suffered relegation upon relegation and in so doing became the first club to have played all 91 other league clubs. Kudos.

In recent times though, Brentford have bounced back somewhat and are the only club to have won the Fourth Division, Division Three and League Two, which are all actually the same thing, just a bit more glossy if you believe the Americanisation hype the FA have bestowed upon our sport.

In a chilling reminder to all to ‘Carpe Diem’ and suchlike, former Bees manager Mark Warburton has gone from one of the hottest properties in football to having to work in Scottish football and even worse for Fawaz Al Halfwit, since leaving Brentford on a point of principle in May 2015. Now scraping a living on the banks of the Trent, how the mighty have fallen.

Famous Bees fans include telly boss and former FA Chairman Greg Dyke, ‘Enders heart throb Dean Gaffney, the indisputably hottest bird on Sky Natalie Sawyer, music bloke Rick Wakeman, and internet “researcher" Pete Townshend.

It’s unlikely that Brentford fans have much love for the other Scottish football club either; in a 2013 pre-season friendly, Celtic fans invaded the pitch post-match and tried to snap the crossbars in addition to allegedly singing about Lee Rigby and Princess Diana, in scenes the mild-mannered then Celtic coach Neil Lennon described as “..a bit over-exuberant." Ever the statesman

That’s all the supernets revealed on Friday’s meaningless dead-rubber fixture; all that remains now is to finish a couple of points out of contention and spend the summer wondering what might have been…


**unashamedly copied most of this from the last HGT: Brentford