Non-league Boreham Wood stuns Bournemouth

Non-league Boreham Wood stunned Bournemouth as 37-year-old Mark Ricketts scored to knock the Championship club out of the FA Cup and set up a fifth-round tie at Everton.

Captain Ricketts – a qualified personal trainer – found the net from the edge of the box with a shot which went in off the post after a poor clearance by Gavin Kilkenny.

It sparked jubilant scenes among 1,400 travelling Wood fans – 500 more than their average home attendance in the National League.

Boreham Wood – and their chairman Danny Hunter – can now look forward to a money-spinning tie at Goodison Park.

Hunter revealed in June 2020 that he had remortaged his house to help the club cope with the financial effects of coronavirus.

“I’m in tatters,” said Boreham Wood boss Luke Garrard, who ran on the pitch to celebrate with his players after referee Graham Scott blew the full-time whistle at the Vitality Stadium to spark emotional scenes in the away end.

“I am on top of the world, the emotions at the minute are incredible. We are such a dysfunctional family, but that is what is helping get us our results.”

Bournemouth, third in the Championship and chasing automatic promotion to the Premier League, wasted a great chance to equalise when Philip Billing’s lob over the keeper landed on the roof of the net.

Keeper Taye Ashby-Hammond, on loan from Fulham, produced two great late saves to deny Ryan Christie and Billing to further frustrate Scott Parker’s team.

Boreham Wood, who play three leagues below Bournemouth, are the first non-league side to make the fifth round since Sutton United and Lincoln City – who were both National League clubs at the time – in 2017.