This year’s National League play-off final pitches a team with a rich history in the Football League against one with none, yet Forest Green are not the plucky underdogs they may appear to be from the outside.
“Welcome to the Vanarama Big Day Out 3.” The message on the giant LED screen on Wembley’s glass-fronted exterior is impossible to miss, catching the eye the moment you exit Wembley Park station.
There are two and a half hours to kick-off and only a trickle of spectators outside the stadium, yet there is no disputing the significance of this so-called Big Day Out. It will draw an attendance nowhere near the crowds assembling elsewhere in the capital today – Tottenham Hotspur say goodbye to White Hart Lane, and West Ham United host Liverpool – but for those involved, the National League play-off final is as sizeable as its billing.
For one club, Forest Green Rovers, it is an opportunity to reach the Football League for the first time in their 128-year history. For the other, Tranmere Rovers, it is about reclaiming the League status lost, after 94 years, two seasons ago. Both clubs have owners with ambitions that stretch as far as the Championship. In Forest Green’s case that is Dale Vince, owner of green energy company Ecotricity, who has drawn the spotlight to the Cotswold town of Nailsworth with an eco-friendly approach bringing everything from vegan burgers to a solar-powered robot lawnmower to The New Lawn.
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Esta historia es de la edición July 2017 de When Saturday Comes.
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