First Played: 1985-6
Win Rate: 55% (from 11 games)
It’s Rainham Town! Hallelujah; a team we faced many times between 1985 and 1991 – but who folded at the end of the 1993-4 season. For the entire time between 1977 and their demise in the early 1990s, they could be found in the lower reaches of the Isthmian League. After finishing bottom in their final campaign, relegation to Division Three was next. But it never happened, clearly, as they resigned from the league and left the scene.
To be honest, there ain’t all that much for us to go on. Formed in 1945, the club first played its matches at Rainham Working Men’s Club Ground. Just three years later, however, they moved to Deri Park – the venue they’d call home for the rest of their days. It was about the same time the club started playing in the London League. But the random three-year cycle struck again in 1951; Rainham becoming one of the Delphian League’s founder members.
For the most part, the club could often be found in the top part of the table; a second-place finish in the 1956-7 campaign as good as it got. In the early 1960s, there was a short spell in the Metropolitan League before the club found a new competition: the Athenian League. Here they’d be ’til the late 1970s, at which point the Isthmian League proved too much of a draw and became their footballing home for the next one-and-a-half decades.
For the 1983-4 season, Rainham Town competed in Isthmian League Division Two. But this was split into north and south divisions for the following campaign. More teams came into the fold, you see. One of those noobs was Boro’; taking our place in the 1984-5 Isthmian League Division Two North line-up. Rainham, however, were tossed in with the south lot. So, that is that – no? No. Just one season in and the Essex side moved to the north.
It’d be us against them for the first time.
| Pl | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts* | WR% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 11 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 25 | 14 | 11 | 20 | 55% |
| Home | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 15 | 8 | 7 | 10 | 60% |
| Away | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 6 | 4 | 10 | 50% |
| League | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 21 | 9 | 12 | 20 | 75% |
| Cup | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 5 | -1 | n/a | 0% |
* league points only
| No Players |
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