'It was a non-league miracle!' - Bedford Town boss Lee Bircham on second successive promotion

A run of 14 straight defeats saw them plummet to the bottom of the table and then through the trap door in April 2023, into the SPL Division One Central.

Enter Lee Bircham.

Fresh from guiding Leighton Town to a title win at step five, Bircham was brought in by the Eagles to steady the ship and help guide them back up the pyramid, which he did immediately by overseeing promotion via the play-offs to back from whence they’d come 12 months earlier.

"The aim this season was to stay up, it’s as simple as that,” he said.

"Our budget is probably one of the lowest two or three in the league and we started the season without being able to play any home games due to our new 3G pitch being delayed.

"So we were up against it from the start, and I don’t think any of us could have predicted what would follow.”

What would follow was nothing short of remarkable. Two wins from their first eight matches saw them settle into an early mid-table slot, before four wins on the bounce propelled them higher and into the promotion reckoning, not that Bircham would hear any mention of the ‘P’ word at that stage, indeed he was more concerned by the ‘R’ word right up until that became a mathematical impossibility.

He said: “We had lots of well-documented issues early on, from the ground issues to our striker Leon Lobjoit losing his baby girl which obviously devastated all of us, and our budget was what it was – the club gave us what they could but when you consider the size of the clubs we were up against and their relative financial power, we had to be realistic of what we could aim at and that included when trying to attract players.

"In the end we had a really good squad – perhaps not always the greatest players but brilliant as a team. The core of the team stayed the same but we lost a few on the periphery as they weren’t getting games which was understandable.

“But we broke all the rules. We only trained once a week, we used seven goalkeepers in total – all things that wouldn’t usually give you any chance of progress.”

With Bedford continuing to defy the odds, the latter part of the season suddenly became centred around a title chase from which they simply weren't dropping out, and ultimately one from which they would remarkably emerge victorious despite the close attentions of clubs including Kettering Town and AFC Telford United.

Bircham said: “I refused to believe we’d win it until about ten minutes from the end of the final game, when we went 2-0 up against Stourbridge and Banbury equalised at Kettering.

"In the last 13 games we had 11 wins and two draws, an incredible run where we showed so much bottle and in the end won the league by five points. It hasn’t really sunk in how crazy it is but I feel like it’s the ‘Leicester City story’ of non-league – it was a miracle.

"Nobody had even spoken about winning the league until the last day – we’d never even spoken about a top half finish until that was safe. Only two months from the end of the season did we stop looking at the bottom end of the table and instead started looking at the top.

"I’ve had five promotions in the last six years – four as champions – but this is far and away the best achievement of my career and something I’ll never forget given how unexpected it was.”

It all means that attention now turns to the National League. It’s currently expected the Eagles could be placed in the National League North given the geographical locations of those already at step two and of those who are being promoted and relegated into it, though that will be confirmed by the FA’s Leagues Committee in due course.

But no matter in which division Bedford are placed, Bircham is under no illusions how tough it will be, and whilst he’s keen to carry on his remarkable story with Bedford, he wants to see just how competitive the club will expect to be.

A proposed merger with Real Bedford has been put on the back burner for at least another year, meaning it’s Bedford Town all the way as they head into step two.

He said: “I know we said it this season and look what happened, but next year will be a huge jump and once again, survival will be the only aim.

"This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for this club – if we got relegated it would be very hard to repeat what’s just happened and come back.

"But we can’t go into the National League and be cannon fodder. We can only spend what we can afford but need to give ourselves a fighting chance rather than achieving this and getting picked off.

"I trust the owners – they have been absolutely brilliant. The club wasn’t really ready for step three and now we’re going to step two so it’ll be a busy summer.”