With 2026 almost upon us, it may be a good time to take a step back and look at how the 2025/26 is unfolding down at Bridge Road. It has been an eventful five months since the season got under way back in July and judging by our league position, our successes have outnumbered our failures. But football, as they say, is a funny old game, and nobody has ever won anything in December. So, here is a look at how we got where we are with thirteen league games still to come.
July – A promising pre-season
As the new season dawned, we learned that coaches Matt Vernon and Jordan Williams had moved on to pastures new over the Summer and had been replaced by Matt Payne and Mark Critoph as assistants to Manager Chris Nunn. Both Mark and Matt were familiar names to us, as were the teams we were to play in our pre-season schedule in preparation for the new campaign.
The results of pre-season fixtures are rarely an accurate indicator of how the season ahead is going to pan out, but if they were, we would have been brimming with optimism, particularly after our 6-1 trouncing of Step 4 side Biggleswade Town. Of course, you can never be sure about the strength of the side your opponents might be fielding in these pre-season games, or their level of fitness, but the friendly games gave us an early glimpse of Danny Baulk, who Chris Nunn had signed from St Neots Town, and fellow winger Joe Greenslade-Cross who was previously with Lakenheath Town. Goalkeeper Jake West was also looking like a shrewd signing by Nunny, as was Adden Tokley who looked like a particularly good find.
But it was only when the season got properly started that we could start to think about our chances of achieving our objective for the season, which for the second year running was to be “there or there abouts” come next April. That’s not an unreasonable request from the Chairman given that we were embarking on our fourth season at Step 5 having failed to bounce straight back up following our relegation in 2022.
August – We fall at the third hurdle in the FA Cup
A win at Bugbrooke St. Michaels and a creditable draw at home to March Town United gave us a solid start to our league campaign. A home draw against Eastern Counties League side Thetford Town in the FA Cup raised hopes of progression, but it would have to be without Nunny in the dugout due to a one-off holiday arrangement which unavoidably coincided with the start of the football season, much like his one-off holiday arrangement the previous football season. In a sign of things to come, Matt Payne and Mark Critoph temporarily took the managerial reigns and got us into the draw for the next round of the cup after a replay.
A disappointing one-nil defeat at home against Coventry United, who had their goalkeeper red carded in the second half, was followed by a scrappy draw at Yaxley.
Nunny was back in the country for our next FA Cup tie against Woodbridge Town, who became the second consecutive side to lose their goalkeeper during a game at Bridge Road, but this time due to a badly injured ankle. We came out on top by a 5-2 scoreline, which earned us a First Preliminary Round tie against top ECL side Mulbarton Wanderers, but that was as far as we got.
Prior to our FA Vase encounter with lower league side Eaton Socon, Nunny wrote in his programme notes that he has twice been in the quarter-finals of the competition as a manager and would like to improve on that record. He added that he would like us to still be in the competition at Christmas. Sadly, we didn’t even make it to the end of August, as we surrendered a two-goal lead to draw 3-3 and lose 4-1 on penalties.
September – A farewell to Chris Nunn
September started with the visit of UCL Division One side Southwell City for a League Cup tie. Our visitors from Nottinghamshire marked their trip south by putting four goals past us without reply, bringing a swift end to our hopes in yet another cup competition.
That was to be Nunny’s final game as Manager of Histon FC. After two years at the helm, and the club sixteenth in the league table, Nunny resigned to take up an offer from St Neots Town to work alongside their current manager, taking his loyal wingman Mick Hunter with him.
The club Board wasted no time in appointing Matt Payne and Mark Critoph as joint managers, thereby ensuring continuity and minimal disruption to First team affairs. Their appointment was soon followed by the arrival of former Histon player and Newmarket Town assistant manager Wayne Goddard as coach. Matt and Mark, or M&M for short, made it known right from the start that they had trust and belief in their players, but this didn’t prevent them losing their first two games in charge with a total of eight goals conceded.
But on the night of Tuesday 23rd September, a two-nil win against Northampton Sileby Rangers signalled a new beginning for our season. The result ended a run of four consecutive defeats and set us off on a run of results that would take us to the giddy heights of second place in the table. An incredible game at Hinckley, in which we were two goals up inside three minutes, ended with Deacon Pattison scoring a 95th minute equaliser after a thoroughly gutsy performance by the entire Histon side.
Meanwhile, our Under 18s side, under the guidance of coach Lee Keen, was starting to turn a few heads with some quite remarkable scorelines. A 7-0 win and an 8-0 win were followed by a 15-0 win over Yaxley in an FA Youth Cup Preliminary Round tie. Sadly, they came up against a very good Rushden and Diamonds side in the next round but have gone on to re-write the record books in the Thurlow Nunn Youth League. Their record currently stands at 10 wins from 10 games, 88 goals scored and 1 goal conceded.
Not to be outdone, our Ladies side have also gone undefeated in their Eastern Region Women’s League Division One North campaign. Managers Darren Marjoram and Liz Pamplin have them sitting comfortably clear of their nearest rivals, winning won all 13 of their league fixtures to date. The star performer for the Ladies side is Evie Nicholls with a personal tally of 21 goals in 17 games, including three hattricks.
October – Six wins in seven games
We started the month in good style, winning 3-1 at Newport Pagnell with a performance that Mark Critoph described as “.…our best performance of the season.” Little did we know that even better performances were soon to follow.
An equally determined performance saw off Great Shelford 4-0 in the Cambs Invitation Cup, which was a potential banana skin if ever there was one. A 5-3 win against Easington Sports saw the recently acquired Jordan Foster score the first of the 12 goals he has to his name in 16 Histon appearances. A 4-0 win at Daventry Town continued the upward trend and suddenly we were scoring goals for fun and playing with a level of commitment and desire to win that had been sadly lacking earlier in the season.
For a brief moment it looked like the wheels had come off our merry bandwagon when we were 0-2 down at home against Yaxley, but after Foster had pulled a goal back, Connor Barnes scored two more to turn the game around and confirm his own growing reputation as a fearsome goal-machine.
A five-game winning streak became a six-game winning streak with a now characteristically determined performance at Atherstone Town. But the fun ended on a wet night at March Town United when we ran the home side much closer than the 0-3 scoreline would suggest.
November – A day to remember in Nuneaton
After a disappointing exit from the Cambs Invitation Cup in the Lance Key Derby at Soham, we put GNG Oadby Town and Easington Sports to the sword in quick succession before facing the daunting prospect of visiting the league leaders Nuneaton Town, who had been unbeaten at home for over a year. What we saw on that day was a Histon side that was determined to fight for the cause in a way the locals had not seen since the House of York defeated Richard III at the nearby battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. We were simply magnificent, and the scenes at the end of the game will live long in the memory of every Stutes fan who had made the long journey to Warwickshire.
A point from a full-blooded local derby at Godmanchester Rovers was followed by a 5-1 drubbing at Coventry United. We ended the month with another disappointing defeat against Moulton at the end of what had been a frenetic month for our relatively thin squad. We had done enough to keep our place in the top five, but had we peaked too early with that win at Nuneaton?
December – A near-perfect month
A trip to Aylestone Park is a daunting prospect at the best of times, let alone after consecutive defeats, but as we turned a new page at the start of December we suddenly got our mojo back. Our spirit and determination had returned in abundance and we simply swept Aylestone Park aside to end another side’s unbeaten home record for the season. It was a win that moved us up into third place in the league table.
We saw the month out with three home games, and after easing past N’pton ON Chenecks and Bugbrooke St. Michaels, we looked odds on to make it four wins out of four for the month against Eynesbury Rovers. Sadly, Rovers hadn’t read the script and put in a performance befitting of any Christmas pantomime villain to spoil our hopes of being crowned the UCL Team of the Month for December.
And there’s more to come
The 2025/26 season already has plenty of talking points with the departure of Chris Nunn, the appointment of M&M, the goalscoring form of Connor Barnes and Jordan Foster, the outstanding victories at Nuneaton and Aylestone Park and our rise up the table from 16th in September to 3rd at the end of December. But there has been one further event this season that could trump all of the above.
On 23rd August 17-year-old Theo Goddard made his Histon debut from the bench in our FA Vase game against Eaton Socon. He was sent off within a few minutes of coming onto the pitch, extremely harshly in the opinion of many. Since that point, he has been outstanding in every game he has played for us. It is difficult to comprehend why someone of his obvious talent is not associated with a bigger club, but we can only be grateful to Theo and his father Wayne that he has chosen to play for the Stutes at this point in his career. His qualities have already been recognised by the England Schoolboys setup, which comes as no surprise to those of us who have watched him torment opposing players, some of which are twice his age. Whether Theo is still with us by the end of the season remains to be seen but watching the start of his professional career take shape has been one of the highlights of the season to date.
We now go into the New Year in good spirit and with hopes of recording our best league position for many years. We have thirteen league matches left to play, including the return games against Nuneaton Town and Aylestone Park, but with your support we can make this a season to remember.
