admin“This is like the Disney world experience”- Bromley CEO voices out on Town’s Carabao Clash
For Ipswich Town, tonight’s Carabao Cup first-round tie is business as usual. A trip to a League Two side based in London, like last season, hoping to progress to the next stage and have a decent run.
For Bromley, in the words of CEO Mark Hammond, “this is huge”.
“We’re all excited,” he told the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star.
“Ipswich are a massive club, a huge club. They have got a brilliant history.
“They have got a wonderful community feel, and the public perception of Ipswich – name me a person who doesn’t like Ipswich.”
Norwich fans, I joke in response. “Apart from Norwich fans,” he laughs.
“I think we’re going to embrace and welcome Ipswich. Obviously we’re going to give it our best and try to win the game, but it’s another milestone for us that we’re playing in the Carabao Cup against a Premier League / Championship side.
“We’re excited to host Ipswich and fingers crossed we can win it.
“It’s live on Sky, which is amazing. Is it on CBS? Yeah, it’s in America, this is being shown in America. Like, come on!
“You guys are probably used to it, but for us, this is like the Disney World experience, walking through Disney World where you’re like, ‘oh my god’.”
Town have had a taste of what the lower end of the Football League is like, but their more recent experiences have taken them to the likes of Anfield, Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge.
What can supporters expect from Hayes Lane, a 5,000-seater stadium where only 497 away fans will be able to watch the match?
“I think they are going to come to us and respect us, but also appreciate the journey that we’re on at the moment,” Hammond explained.
“They are going to see the groundwork and construction that’s going on, and they are going to go, ‘yeah, this club are giving it a go, they are doing it the right way’.
“Regardless of the result, we are giving it a go and we want to be among you guys, the best, and be recognised for being a serious football club.”
There might not be many parallels between Bromley and Ipswich, but the Ravens have certainly looked up to the Blues and their sudden rise up the leagues.
Andy Woodman’s side were playing in the eighth tier of English football back in 2004/05. Since then, they have only gone up, earning promotion from the Conference South to the National League in 2015, then finally reaching the Football League in 2024/25.
“Football never sleeps, and this place is eight days a week,” Hammond admitted. “You’ve really got to love the badge, which doesn’t really work with my wife, that one.
“The inspiration and motivation comes from within first. I don’t think we’re aspiring to be anybody other than a better version of ourselves.
“I think this is a principle in life, the moment you try to be somebody you’re not – you try to be somebody who isn’t you or you’re not true to your principles – you’re on a hiding to fail.
“The inspiration and motivation comes from within – the journey, the vision, the drive, the culture, the standards and the fun. That’s the part of it, we have fun with it.
“To now be playing Ipswich – when the draw came through, it was like, ‘brilliant!’, but there was a little bit of disappointment. We’d like to get to the second round and third round.
“But we’re playing a top football club at Hayes Lane, we’ve never done it before. It’s live on Sky, being shown around the world. You could play two or three teams and get to the third round without having that exposure and coverage.
“I think we’ll look at those positives.”
Such a rise may be normal for Wrexham or Stockport County, but Bromley have had to do things differently. Hammond has been part of the project for over a decade, and his unique background has helped him steer the club to new heights.
“I joined the club in 2013, so I’ve been here for 12 years,” he reflected. “I initially joined as a first-team coach, and then took a leap of faith in 2015.
“We had a board whose vision was to build an academy. So I took a leap of faith, before we went from evenings to full time. I was a deputy head at a secondary school, I was head of football and I was a first-team coach at Bromley Football Club, but I was also working for Fulham.
“I was at a crossroads in my career. I was actually going to take my head teacher’s exam, but I had a sliding-doors moment. An incident happened at the school and the head teacher went to sort it, because we were talking about a strategy around raising teaching standards.
“There was a document on the table that said ‘post-16 to 18 government funding’. I picked it up in the absence of the head teacher and started to read it. On page four was the formula.
“Nobody gets exposed to it, it’s only the finance department. Teachers would never know how the calculations work, the formula, the funding. I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, is this how you do it?’.
“It was all fate, it was all meant to happen. Coincidentally, I was meeting the three board members and the co-owner at the time on a Thursday night. I had to present to them the academy plans.
“I had how it actually works and how it’s actually funded. Because I was armed with that information, it gave me the confidence and comfort that – if I was to build the academy, I would actually know how it would be financed.
“I joined full time and I set the academy up. I took it from 30 players to now having 326. The students study an array of qualifications – BTEC, A-Levels, business. We run a degree, we run a career destinations pathway.
“Our mantra is: ‘You’re not coming here to be a professional footballer, you’re coming here to be a professional in football’.
“Over the past nine years, we’ve taken it from three staff to 32 full-time staff with 12 casual staff. We’re very proud and humble to sit here on one of the UK’s biggest education and football academies.
“We’re proud to say that we’ve got an alumni now of first-team players, B-team players, players that we’ve sold, players playing in the Premier League, players playing in the Championship, players in our matchday squads. We’ve created our own workforce.
“We’ve got sports scientists, teachers, trainee physios, community coaches. We’ve built a really comprehensive and substantial community within Bromley Football Club.
“I know it sounds cliché, but we really do serve the people of the Bromley borough and the neighbouring boroughs, especially in South London, North Kent and South Croydon. Without that, I don’t think you get the tempo and the energy behind what goes onto the field.
“While all that growth was happening, the main club was growing. The ownership of Robin Stanton-Gleaves in 2020 really, really accelerated our development. His vision and his business acumen has allowed us to push and develop as we are now.
“The standards, the infrastructure and the resources, we’ve really been able to actually act and operate as if we were a Football League club without being promoted into the Football League.
“For a three-year period, we were working towards a three-to-five-year plan, but acted as a Football League club before we got there. Once we got there, it wasn’t a surprise to us. Any adversity and any bumps in the road, we could deal with them, and we had the resilience to deal with those moments of pressure and adapt.
“We don’t know what the next year looks like, it’s for us to go and design and build. It’s one of the beauties of Bromley Football Club.
“It’s not like we’ve got a history of being in the Premier League in the 90s or having a striker who used to do this, those unattainable benchmarks. We’re just building new metrics, working towards new benchmarks and designing and innovating our future.”
admin
