Forest Green are not *just* a vegan football club
It had been a matter of when rather than if for almost the entirety of the season. Forest Green Rovers’ rise to League Two promotion favourites had been a long time in the making, but makes confirmation of their ascent no less impressive.
A club that takes more than its fair share of unwarranted criticism and ‘banter’ for being *checks notes* vegan and environmentally friendly, could have easily fallen back on those characteristics as being their defining personality traits.
That has been the case for much of their existence since Dale Vince took control of the club in 2010, taking half a decade to become the world’s first vegan football club. The past seven years have seen the club go from strength to strength at a near-constant growth rate, achieving a little bit more almost every successive season, the defining campaign being their 2016/17 promotion to the EFL for the first time in the former Hellenic League club’s history.
In the same year that the club was given a reprieve from dropping out of the fifth tier thanks to Northwich Victoria’s promotion, Vince invested in and then bought and began his revolution of the club into his unique vision of what a football club could be. A lot has happened and a lot has changed in 12 years, almost all of it for the better.
It would be easy to suggest recency bias makes us all forget the struggles; the Gloucestershire side finished 20th in their first League Two season in 2017/18. Considering no club has ever been relegated straight back to the Conference since the Football League restructure early in the 21st century, that was too close for comfort.
But since then, two failed play-off campaigns have established this is a club on the rise. One man who was holding the club back was boss Mark Cooper. The long-serving manager had guided the club through the promotion, the safety and the first of two play-off campaigns to fall at the semi-final hurdle. Behind the scenes though, he left a lot to be desired. One of the EFL’s more controversial managers, his behaviour and attitude has been called into question on multiple occasions, including a comment about the late Justin Edinburgh to his former assistant and then Leyton Orient counterpart Ross Embleton. An eight-game ban for reference to gender with a female assistant referee helped spell the end of his time with Barrow too.
In current boss Rob Edwards, Forest Green are all the easier to like for the neutrals and even begrudgingly by the opposition. Their brand of fast-paced football with killer instincts and league-best numbers in both boxes has garnered the attention of football fans far and wide, for all the right reasons.
They have not been out of the top three all season after defeating Sutton United 2-1 on the opening day. Only after a stalemate with Exeter in September have they been anything other than first. These are records which have tumbled before them for time spent at the pinnacle of a division. Even behemoths and record-breaking sides often have to wait a month or so for the division to settle down.
Even during a seven-game winless run in which they conceded only nine times, Forest Green never looked close to losing their ascendancy to the crown. It would be fun to analyse beyond ‘Forest Green are top because they are good and score lots of goals’, but it would also be remiss to suggest that having two of the four top goalscorers in the division doesn’t go a long way to making a team superior to their contemporaries.
Matty Stevens and Jamille Matt have 41 goals pretty evenly spread between them at 23 and 18, with the latter having also teed up his teammates on nine occasions. Realistically, only he and Northampton’s Sam Hoskins with 11 goals and eight assists could break double figures for both metrics come the 46-game mark.
Given Forest Green’s penchant for being unique, there can be a subconscious thinking that this success is what was expected of the club. Rest assured, this is not a team with unlimited budgets nor with a team of superstars at this level. On paper, their squad is good, but it is coaching, a clear vision, and a refusal to rip up the squad that got them to the play-offs last season that have all played greater parts in getting Forest Green to the top of the league.
There are no guarantees of success another level up, but Forest Green are going up in as strong a position as possible. Edwards has never managed at this level before and took to it with aplomb. He is the latest in an increasingly longer line of younger coaches to have retired early from professional football or to have never played it at all, instead putting greater effort into being a great coach and manager from a younger age.
Now 39, Edwards is ready to make the step up to League One management for the first time with Forest Green also set for their debut season at that level. Two wins from the final three games all but guarantees the most deserved of titles too.
For a club who could so easily fall back on their unique character as the main measure of success, Forest Green are making a name for themselves as a football club winning on the pitch as well as off it.