Woodford Bridge F.C.
Woodford Bridge FC was an English association football club based in Woodford Bridge, Essex. The club was founded in 1880 and entered the FA Cup from 1881–82 to 1883–84 without winning a tie.
History
The club's second FA Cup entry, in 1882–83, saw it drawn to play the Royal Engineers, who, although a shadow of their former selves, still easily won 3–1, despite the Bridge taking a wind-assisted early lead.The club claimed a successful season in 1884–85, winning 13 of its 22 matches, including two ties in the London Senior Cup for the only time, and reaching the final of the second Essex Senior Cup. The club survived a protest from the Forest Rangers club from Epping over whether one of the Bridge players was genuinely a member of the club, although, given that Woodford Bridge had won the tie 7–1, the protest was considered to be nothing but a "waste of time". In the semi-final the club beat Colchester (Town) at Brentwood by the same scoreline, but lost to the Old Foresters in the final at Chelmsford 7–0, in a match that only lasted 75 minutes as the referee called for time after half-an-hour in the second half; by the time he had been persuaded to bring the teams back for the last 15 minutes, many of the Bridge players had already left.
Despite this successful competition run, the club did not enter the FA Cup for 1885–86, and that season was knocked out in the third round of the Essex competition by competition debutants Ilford.
The club was still active at the start of the 1886–87 season, being represented at the Essex County Football Association half-yearly meeting and entering the Essex Senior Cup that season, but the last record of a match for the club is a friendly with Chigwell School in March 1887. The next reference to a club in the town after this is to Woodford F.C. in 1896, which was almost certainly a separate club.