Today is a hugely significant day in the history of Romford Football Club as it marks the day on which a meeting was held that brought the first version of the club into being.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on 11th October 1876, a notice appeared in the Essex Times, which said, “A meeting for the purpose of establishing a football club for Romford will be held at the White Hart Hotel this evening at eight o’clock, to which all gentlemen in the movement are respectfully invited.”

The meeting was called by Francis Hugh Thirwall, a 19-year-old bank clerk and vicar’s son. He proposed that the club play under the rugby code, but he was outvoted. Frederick D’Arcy Richard Clark, another bank clerk, aged 18, was elected to chair the first meeting and a club with 14 members was launched. Many of them worked for the Ind Coope Brewery, hence the club’s nickname, “The Brewers.”

On 13th October 1876, at a further meeting held at the White Hart Hotel, the club’s rules and regulations were confirmed and a committee was appointed. A further meeting was held on 16th October when the club colours of blue and black were adopted and it was agreed that a match would be played at the local cricket ground the following Saturday.

With no organised leagues and the establishment of the Essex Senior Cup and FA Amateur Cup some years away (1884 and 1894), early matches were played between club members and friendlies against other clubs. The FA Cup had first been played for in the 1871-72 season, but it was not until 1878 that Romford took part, their first game being a First Round tie against Ramblers (Walthamstow), which Romford won 3-1. It was the club’s first competitive match.

The first recorded Romford FC match took place on Saturday 21st October 1876 when the FDR Clark Select team beat the E Champness Select side 2-0. Further games that season saw the Smith XI beat the Read XI 3-0, and the Captain’s XI beat the Secretary’s XI 3-2, although not all of the teams actually comprised eleven players.

The first games played by Romford FC against other clubs were friendlies and were thought to have begun with an away match against Chigwell Grammar School on 9th December 1876, which ended in a 0-0 draw. Recently however, new information has come to light which reveals that the first game played by Romford against another club took place on the 2nd of December 1876 against Brentwood Grammar School which Romford won 2-0.

There were other incarnations of the football club between the formation of the original in 1876 – Romford United, Romford Town, and Romford Town & Ivyleafers – until the last of these folded in December 1920, in part due to competition from the Great Eastern Railway Football Club. For the rest of the 1920s the only club bearing the name Romford was Romford Town Thursday, who played on Thursday afternoons (which was early closing day) at Brooklands. In 1929 a new Romford FC came into being when a meeting in the March of that year resulted in the formation of the club that would endure until 1978.

There are some football historians who claim that the football club we follow today has no entitlement to the history of the club that existed from 1929 to 1978 and far less to that of the original club formed 150 years ago. Unlike disputes involving the histories of other clubs however, there is no one else laying claim to the history of the Romford Football Club that came into being in October 1876. There can be no doubt that had it not been for that meeting on 11th October 1876, the history of football in Romford would have been very different.