England’s 93rd best football club are coming for the establishment

This season we’re doing football journalism differently. Join The i Paper Sport channel on WhatsApp here to vote for the club Daniel Storey should cover this week on The Journeyman Luke Garrard is sitting on a cool box placed against the advertising hoardings. It is positioned slightly away from the dugout, giving the impression that he is on his own, like a small child perched on their suitcase on a train platform. Garrard remains there, almost motionless, for what I would estimate to be 1.3 seconds. Then he is up, shouting at one of his players, gesticulating at the fourth official, using some industrial language and running over for a quick chat with assistant Junior Lewis, who is standing at the back of the bench several metres away. He scampers back down to the cool box for more gestures before almost getting into a tussle with the opposition manager. It is, to be clear, pretty intense. I have sat behind lots of managers at lots of matches, somewhere in the hundreds. Garrard ranks in the top 10 for the most manic, although no official list exists. I forgot to mention that, during most of this, his team are winning 3-1 with eight minutes remaining against a Kidderminster Harriers side that had been reduced to 10 men long before. There have been 145 clubs in the history of the Football League and Boreham Wood are favourites to become the 146th. When I visit, they are top of the National League, unbeaten and odds-on to win the division and secure automatic promotion. For a club that was in the National League South two years ago, competing in a division containing several former league clubs with bigger budgets, this dominance is unexpected.Barring a five-month period in 2024, when I hope he sat completely still in a darkened room to restore his energy levels, Garrard has been doing this, gesture mania and all, for 11 years. Immediately before that, he spent five seasons as a Boreham Wood player. Add in a loan season and a short spell in 2005, and Garrard has been employed by the club for roughly 40 per cent of his life. Abdul Abdulmalik was sold to Swedish club Djugardens for £1.5m in August (Photo: Getty) I must return to the intensity for a moment. If you expect Lewis to be the good cop to Garrard’s bad cop, or vice versa, think again. The assistant holds up a hand in acceptance when one player responds in frustration to the umpteenth screech in the previous five minutes. The manager briefly hops around on the spot and shouts. I work out that he wants an attacking player to move away from the goalkeeper at a corner because he is worried about the referee awarding a free-kick. Shortly before half-time, Lewis screams, “F**king break their spirit”, at a volume that would not be out of place in a combat situation. A couple of supporters cheer the message. To an outsider, the basic on-pitch principle appears to be simple: hard to play in this team, harder to play against it. If there is a Boreham Wood way, that essentially defines it. They are in your face and relentless in their pursuit of being better than you. They are capable of passing or ploughing through opponents. They are prepared for a ruckus or a recital, and they back themselves to beat most teams at this level by doing both. The last half-decade in the National League has been defined by high-spending or high-profile clubs duking it out, including Wrexham, York City, Rochdale, Notts County, Barnet, Chesterfield and Stockport. This is different. Boreham Wood certainly do not have the biggest budget in the division, but they are comfortably its highest-performing club. Losing the play-off final on penalties at Wembley in May was merely a speed bump. Boreham Wood would stress that first-team performance is simply the product of the wider ecosystem, so let us wind back. In 2002, the club founded the PASE Academy, which stands for Programme for Academic and Sporting Excellence. The scheme aimed to provide a dual programme for 16 to 19-year-olds, particularly those released by clubs higher up the pyramid. If Boreham Wood have one advantage in the National League, it is their wonderful catchment area just north of north London. The approach became self-fulfilling because the provision was excellent and the results followed. Talent was either developed for the first team or moved out of football with an education that helped secure employment. The club progressed from the Southern League Eastern Division, where they were a big fish, to the National League within a decade. It has been a big summer for the PASE Academy, with two transfers completed on deadline day: Iliman Ndiaye to Manchester City and Sorba Thomas to Hull City. Both players, whose transfer fees totalled more than £75m, were products of the system. Ndiaye joined at 16 after his father moved from Senegal. Thomas arrived after being released by West Ham at the same age. If seeing players who graduated from the academy five and seven years ago secure big moves is proof of the process, a third summer transfer potentially changed Boreham Wood forever. With Ndiaye and Thomas, the club gained no significant financial benefit. In the case of Abdul Abdulmalik, it absolutely did. Before this summer, Boreham Wood’s record sale was £34,000, paid by Crystal Palace in 2008 for forward Simon Thomas. At Wembley in May, I watched Abdulmalik run the game in a manner rarely seen in professional football. He had been released by Millwall in 2024 before being picked up by Boreham Wood at the age of 21. That is an important point: the club recruits released talent for the first team as well as the academy. Abdulmalik’s National League form, coupled with his Wembley display, sparked a scramble involving clubs in the EFL and Sweden’s Allsvenskan. Djurgardens had four bids rejected, with Boreham Wood criticised for not cashing in. A deal was eventually completed for an initial fee of £1.5m, 50 per cent more than the previous non-league record and 44 times the club’s previous record sale. That takes Boreham Wood to the next stage. The fee alone is more than half the club’s likely revenue for last year. It sends a clear message to other released players that Boreham Wood is a good place to develop and earn a second chance remarkably quickly if they impress. It also gave Garrard funds to invest in the squad, although no overhaul was necessary. Boreham Wood have loan players from Chelsea, Tottenham and Fulham, maximising the advantages of their location near London. It all makes sense. The only lingering question is how to bring the local community along for the ride. The crowd for the win over Kidderminster included just over 1,000 home supporters. If the club are promoted, their attendance would be among the lowest in the EFL. Read more Southend United: The Shrimpers can dare to dream again Morecambe: Salvation has turned into something far more sinister It is not easy, with Watford and Barnet nearby and Arsenal and Tottenham drawing support from across the suburbs. Proximity to London may help with player recruitment, but it makes attracting supporters more difficult. As with Bromley before them, there is no shame in marketing yourself as the second team of Premier League fans. Either way, we are about to find out just how far this can go. This is a project defined by self-fulfilment and fuelled by relentlessness, from the football and recruitment to the academy and the pursuit of a place in the Football League. Add managerial long-termism, investment and one of the richest catchment areas in Europe, and you have a recipe for overachievement. Boreham Wood are on their way.