Boreham Wood FA Cup hero Mark Ricketts: ‘It was pure euphoria’

Mark Ricketts might not have played in the biggest game of his long career – the one that will surely define him. The Boreham Wood captain had been out for almost four weeks with a knee injury and he had trained only once, and pretty lightly at that, on the day before the club’s FA Cup fourth-round tie at Bournemouth on 6 February.

The 37-year-old was simply not fit. But he did play, he scored, he ran himself into the ground until his substitution on 87 minutes and Boreham Wood won 1-0 to set up a fifth-round trip to Everton on Thursday night. The fourth round was already uncharted territory for the National League promotion chasers. They are now into a glorious kind of crazy.

Ricketts was a young professional at Charlton, although he never made a first-team matchday squad. He played seven matches on loan at MK Dons, who were in League One at the time but, since 2006, he has been playing non-league. Three seasons at Ebbsfleet, seven at Woking and now into his sixth at Boreham Wood; all but three spent in the top tier of the non-league game.

It is difficult to overstate Ricketts’ popularity at Boreham Wood. He is generous and humble, and if there was to be a hero against Bournemouth, most people would have wanted it to be him. The holding midfielder is also not known as a prolific scorer. Before Bournemouth, he had six career goals. And so it really is a beautiful thing to hear him relive his moment – the low sidefoot after an unconvincing Bournemouth clearance that had come to him seemingly in slow motion.

“The shot went in pretty slowly, too,” Ricketts says. “It glanced off the post and trickled across the line. There was a lot of waiting. But once I saw it go in, it was just a release of pure euphoria. I can’t even