2 min read
It is just after three o’clock on a hot bank holiday Monday in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and the Sir Halley Stewart Playing Field is rammed with more than 2,700 supporters squeezing into the ground. Nearly 500 of them have travelled from Bedford to watch Real Bedford, a club that did not exist in its current form until a few years ago, try to take one more unlikely step up the football pyramid.
In 2021, local entrepreneur and podcaster Peter McCormack bought Bedford FC, then playing in the 10th tier, renamed it Real Bedford and began talking about taking his hometown club all the way. Since then, Real Bedford have won three successive promotions, attracted significant investment, and made Bedford, one of England’s largest towns without a professional football club, feel as if it might finally have a team with proper momentum behind it.
“Bedford has always had the people, the pride and the appetite for football, but it never had a club that matched the size of the town,” says McCormack. “The ambition is huge, but it has to feel local first. If people in Bedford don’t feel this belongs to them, then it doesn’t work.”
