IT'S been a roller coaster ride for Rushden Town Football Club this last century, with years of glorious success mingled with less auspicious times.

But anyone who knows even a little of the club's history will appreciate that the highspots comfortably outweigh the troughs!

The club emerged in 1889 from what had been Rushden Fosse football club. It seems someone with ambition to mould a successful outfit poached from five existing teams of the time to produce Rushden Town.

The annals of the Evening Telegraph show that the new club played no less a team than Aston Villa in a pre-season friendly, losing 4-1. There were suggestions that Villa's winning team was not up to first team strength for the trip to Northamptonshire, but win they did.

In 1893 Rushden won the Northants Senior Cup (now the Hillier Senior Cup) and considered the top trophy played for in the county. Things went on uneventfully for some years until the club entered what pundits reckon was its most glorious years yet — the 1930s.

In fact, success started a little sooner. The club took the Senior Cup in 1926, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1935 and 1937. And it was runner-up in '32, '34, '36, '38 and '39. An extraordinary record.

Rushden defender Alan Mcllwain in action last season

In the middle of its long winning streak it clinched what is almost certainly a unique treble in the 1934-35 season by adding the league cup and league title to its Senior Cup success. 

After the war things got back to normal but there, were no outstanding performances to record in a centenary retrospect.

Until 1958, that is, when the Senior Cup came Rushden's way again. Twenty years later, with Harry Fallen as manager, the cup landed in Rushden once more.

In 1983 Rushden, known by everyone as the Russians, took the big step of entering the Southern League (from the United Counties league) under the managership of Mick Walpole.

Roger Ashby took over the reins on the field in October, 1987 and in the 88-89 season just ended, Rushden finished a creditable seventh in the Beazer Homes League Midlands division — without a single away win from September to February!

The club's youth side is bursting with promise. Indeed it proved talented enough to win the Eastern Junior Plate competition with manager Steve Cavender, making it only the second non-league club to achieve this success.

On the business side, the club now a full-time commercial manager in Denis Prowse and a recently appointed full-time secretary in Bernard Lake. And with a go-ahead chairman in Rushden civil engineering company chief Neil Gant there is a team to take the club back to the top.