Leyton FC: An Unfathomable Past and an Uncertain Future

A Tangled History

Last week, Leyton FC emailed its resignation to the Ryman League. The club was already suspended for failing to pay its registration fee, leading to the departure of the chairman, manager, club secretary, and the entire playing squad. The resignation itself was sent by a Louise Sophocleous, appointed as a director on 1 March 2010, just over a month after the previous chairman, Costas Sophocleous, was sent to prison.

Nothing with Leyton has ever been straightforward. The club’s convoluted history has seen four reformations and a trip to the High Court over who exactly owned that history. Founded in 1868, the original club was disbanded multiple times before a 1920s incarnation found success, winning the Athenian League in 1929 and the FA Amateur Cup in 1927 and 1928. Another period of success in the mid-1960s, with two more Athenian League titles, was followed by a merger with Wingate FC to form Leyton-Wingate. In 1992, another merger with Walthamstow Pennant created Leyton-Pennant.

This arrangement did not last. A new club, Leyton FC, was formed in 1997 and moved back to the old Lea Bridge Road ground. Both clubs laid claim to the history of the original 1868 side, a dispute that ended up in the High Court in 2002. Leyton FC won the case, with the court restoring its name, its history, and its membership of the Football Association. Leyton-Pennant, who it was suggested could not afford to fight the case properly, changed their name to Waltham Forest FC in 2003.

The Sophocleous Years

With its history restored, Leyton FC enjoyed a brief renaissance, climbing from the Essex Intermediate League to the Premier Division of the Isthmian League between 1999 and 2004. In 2005, they finished fifth and only missed out on promotion to the Blue Square South after a play-off defeat to Eastleigh. Even then, crowds averaged just 123. The collapse that followed was spectacular. Relegated in 2008, they only avoided a second drop last season due to dissolutions elsewhere. By the 2008-09 season, average attendances had slumped to just 64.

This period was bankrolled by chairman Costas Sophocleous, who also managed the team for two seasons and whose son, Mark, played for the club. In January of last year, Sophocleous’s time at Lea Bridge Road came to an abrupt end. He had attracted the attention of HMRC over the dealings of his company, Eastway Construction. HMRC established that since 1996, the company had been falsely submitting VAT returns, netting around £16 million, of which £9 million found its way to Sophocleous himself. The money had paid for a refurbishment of the bar at the Lea Bridge Road ground, and it was reported that his son Mark had been on a wage of £1,000 per week. Sophocleous was sentenced to eight years and three months in prison.

You have in my mind the typical characteristics of the fraudster - apparently unable to make a success of a legitimate business you turned to fraud.

Those were Judge Edmonds’ words for the man he described as the “driving force” behind the frauds. While his wife Alison and son Mark were cleared of money laundering charges, the club was left rudderless.

An Expunged Record

Tony Hardy took over as chairman, but the club has been bottom of the Ryman League Division One North for most of this season. Leyton’s final match, fittingly, was a 1-0 defeat to Waltham Forest on 8 January. The attendance was recorded as just 45 people.

The club has not quite folded. Its under-18 team will continue for the rest of the season, and a public statement confirmed, “The future of the club is up in the air and only time will tell what the outcome will be”.

It is a strange fact that Eastway Construction, the company at the centre of the fraud, had also sponsored the Essex Senior League for a time. Their record for this season will be expunged, but the question of what happens next remains. With either Tottenham or West Ham set to move into the Olympic Stadium and Barry Hearn agitating for Leyton Orient to move to Essex, a vacuum could appear. Could a new, community-based club start afresh at Lea Bridge Road? Or will a “new” Leyton FC simply re-emerge a few divisions lower, destined to repeat the mistakes of the past?