Stockport County revival has reconnected club with community

Stockport County fell from the second tier to the sixth in 12 years, but the clouds have now lifted and the club is looking revitalised.

Considering the relative positions of the teams concerned, they were expecting an eventful evening at the top of the National League for the clash between Stockport County and Chesterfield last week, and they certainly got it. They went into the fixture occupying the top two places in the league table, level on points and separated by just three goals worth of goal difference.

A crowd of 10,236 turned out for the match. This was, remarkably, not the biggest National League crowd of the season – a new record attendance for the league was set in November, when 12,843 people saw Notts County play Solihull Moors – but it was still another huge crowd in a season that has seen attendances at this level of the game and below take a sharp upward turn.

The match that followed didn’t let them down. Chesterfield raced into a 2-0 first-half lead – ably assisted by the Stockport goalkeeper, who allowed a tame shot to pass through his legs and in – but the sending-off of Jeff King four minutes into the second half allowed Stockport a route back in, and goals from Will Collar and Ryan Croasdale brought them level with 25 minutes still to play. By the end, Chesterfield were hanging on a little for the draw. The result left Stockport top of the table. Just.

Stockport County are undergoing a revival that is long overdue. Twenty years ago this year, they were in what is now known as the Championship. It wasn’t an especially happy time for the club – they ended the season bottom of the table, and the middle of February saw them thoroughly stuck in a rut that had seen them win just two of their last 14