Billericay Town And The FA Vase  

Billericay Town can look back at the 1970s as a golden era which few clubs are lucky enough to experience.   

Beginning the decade as Essex Olympian League champions Billericay Town added three Essex Senior League titles, two Athenian League championships and two successive Isthmian League promotions to end 1981 as an Isthmian Premier Division club. 

That level of success is remarkable by any standards but it was in the FA Vase that Town truly struck the heights with an historic record breaking run of victories cumulating in three Wembley appearances in four years with Billericay winning the Vase on each occasion. 

The remarkable run of success began in 1976; the second year of the competition.  Crowned Essex Senior League champions for the third time in four seasons Billericay Town reached the Vase Final after battling through nine ties including a 2-1 aggregate semi-final win over Farnborough Town.   

Billericay faced United Counties League side Stamford in the Wembley final in front of 11,848 fans.  The two teams were well matched with Stamford having finished as champions of the UCL though and were as dominant in Lincolnshire as Billericay were in Essex. 

Neither side could engineer a breakthrough in normal time but an extra-time strike from Aslett was enough to win the Vase for the Essex side as they began an era of dominance in the national competition. 

The following season, 1976-77, Billericay were back at Wembley to face Yorkshire League side Sheffield.  Again, Town faced a tough task.  Sheffield had won the Yorkshire League Second Division and wouldn’t be easy to beat.   

But, having being crowned Essex League champions for the second successive year, Billericay must have fancied their chances against their northern challengers.  Town hadn’t found it easy reaching their second final needing replays to beat both Redhill and Almondsbury Greenway; the Gloucestershire club which Town would soon lock horns with again.   

In the two legged semi-final Billericay were again drawn to face Farnborough Town. 

Farnborough had won the newly formed London Spartan League after three successive Spartan League championships and the first-leg of the semi-final at the Surrey club proved disastrous for Billericay as they slumped to a 2-0 defeat but they bounced back in style with an emphatic 6-0 home win in the second-leg to reach Wembley.   

14000 were at the national stadium to see Town and Sheffield grind out a 1-1 draw.  The replay at Nottingham Forest was equally tight with Billericay squeezing home by the odd goal in three; Aslett and Woodhouse the scorers. 

Billericays dominance of the Vase was broken in 1977-78 when they went out in the Fifth Round though an FA Cup run to the final qualifying round may have stretched the club to its limits. 

They bounced back the following season and made it three finals in four years when they renewed acquaintance with Almondsbury Greenway at Wembley.    

This tie was to become famous as Billericay striker Doug Young created a piece of history.  Young.  became the first player to hit a Wembley cup-final hat-trick since Geoff Hurst in the 1966 World Cup Final and was the first, and so far only, striker to notch three in the final of the FA Vase.   

A huge 17,000 crowd were there to witness Young’s heroics as Billericay surged to a decisive 4-1 triumph.  Young was later quoted as saying, "When I got the hat-trick, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I ran to the corner flag and stood there like an idiot – I was totally embarrassed!" 

No team has since matched Billericay Town and their incredible achievements in the Vase.