Bromley are a Football League club for the first time in their 132-year history. Sky Sports visits Hayes Lane as key figures tell their promotion story.
The 52-year-old gave up his role as head of goalkeeping at Arsenal, having worked as first-team goalkeeping coach with Newcastle, West Ham and Crystal Palace, to become Bromley manager in 2021.
Beyond all of that, I felt I would be good at management. I'm not saying I'm Pep Guardiola or Alex Ferguson. I'm young in my management, but I do think there's a way of managing people. My assistant manager Alan Dunne – 15 years at Millwall - has worked with me from day one and is a relentless character.
I've worked with Arsene Wenger, Alan Pardew, Sam Allardyce and Steve McClaren. People think I've just gone to work and not watched what they do and how they do things - and what I would do differently. Then, when we've played against opposition managers, how they act and what they do. I sat with all the staff at the club - not just the players - all the kitchen staff, the cleaners, the office staff, everybody. I said this is how we're going to do it, this is why we're going to do it, this is what we're doing it for - and then planned it out.
That still drives me. I wanted to do it for this town, for these people that work here, and for this club. Football isn't a very loyal business. I felt I owed loyalty to the owner. The owner took a chance on me. I felt I owed it to the players and the supporters here too. I felt I had to get this club into the League.
We went to Portugal on a training camp for seven days and played two 60-minute games in hot conditions against Cambridge and Bristol Rovers - and got good results. This club's 132 years old, it's been like a dormant volcano waiting to erupt, so hopefully we can keep it erupting.Grant Smith made his League Two debut for Lincoln in 2018 after working his way up through non-League from Bognor Regis Town. The 30-year-old signed for Bromley in 2023 and played 48 times last season, saving two penalties in the play-off final shoot-out.
I wasn't sure about Bromley initially, more so location-wise, that was the only issue, but I had three or four different offers from the manager. That’s what really turned my head, because I was sitting there thinking,"This guy really wants me". I knew I was going to save one. Thankfully, I saved two. Ironically, my penalty-saving record wasn’t great last season. Leading up to the final there were jokes with the coaches about subbing me off in the last minute and bringing on someone else to give it a go.
I played a lot of that season in fear. Which, for any player, but especially a goalkeeper, is never going to work out. It was always a pipe dream to see Bromley at this level. It hasn't really sunk in yet because we've been working so hard day and night to get ready. It's only been a couple of months, but it feels like forever. We just can't wait for the first game because then all the prep work that you've done will start to bear fruit.
When I first came down, Bromley were a perennial struggler in the Conference South. Seeing the club even in the National League, let alone in League Two, was always the dream. Just to get promoted one division. I started going to two or three away games, the local ones like Dulwich and Tooting and then in 1962-63 I was going to most of the games. After that, I went to every game and it's still continuing today.
Bromley were one of the biggest amateur clubs in the country after the war and through the 50s. There were amateur
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