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Your support makes all the difference.F or a club still wet behind the ears, Rushden & Di- amonds boast some exotic connections. Eric Cantona, David Ginola and Moscow Dynamo all have bit parts in a story to which the visit of Cardiff City will add a fresh chapter in the FA Cup on Saturday.
Cantona's shirt from the Wembley final of 18 months ago, autographed and framed, hangs in the club's headquarters. Ginola made his bow for Newcastle against them in a pre-season friendly. And four decades ago, local lads christened their new team the Diamonds as a derivation of Russia's legendary sporting ambassadors.
Household names all. Thanks to another foreign luminary, Rushden & Diamonds may eventually be one themselves. The irony is that the gentleman in question, a German from Bavaria, has never heard of the club. He is known for his interest in footwear rather than football. He is also dead.
Dr Klaus Martens' revolutionary boot design - with air-filled "bouncing soles" - was acquired in 1960 by a family firm in the cobbling county of Northamptonshire. Today the business boasts a worldwide weekly sale of 220,000 pairs of "Doc Martens". So profitable has it become that the pounds 10m used to launch and sustain Rushden & Diamonds has not been missed.
Ten million? On a Beazer Homes League team? Max Griggs, chairman of both club and shoemaking empire, is used to people doubting his sanity. They did it three years ago when he financed the merger of two non-League nonentities, Rushden Town and Irthlingborough Diamonds. Now he is confident of Football League status before the turn of the century.
Such visions may appear fanciful given that the full house of 4,600 expected for the Diamonds' debut in the competition proper is equivalent to the population of Irthlingborough ("a few shops either side of the high street and you're in the country," Griggs admits). Yet at Nene Park, a 100-acre complex on the town's outskirts, seeing is believing.
The stadium itself is unrecognisable from the days when the original Diamonds played to 30 men and a dog in the United Counties League. (A few miles away Rushden were drawing 150 in the Beazer Midland Division). A mass of red seats and one spacious terrace have sprouted, with a double- decker stand to accommodate 4,200 on its way.
Griggs, a bouncy soul who supported Northampton from Fourth to First and later had an unfulfilling spell as a director, recalls how the prospective partners invited him along to the old ground. "It didn't appeal to me. All I could see was the development potential, putting some units up. But then I began getting involved, and the football started getting into my blood.
"After I'd agreed to come in, I said: 'Why don't we build a 1,000-seater stand?' People said: 'But we're only getting gates of 250'. They fancied being a nice little club, perhaps in the Conference, but I said: 'Well, let's build it and find out.' So we did, though I was told we were wasting our money. But it was full when we opened it and has been ever since."
The first fixture as Rushden & Diamonds was watched by 315. A gate of 2,078 for Saturday's 5-1 rout of Stafford took this season's average to 1,800. "I'm told there's 250,000 people within a 10-mile radius of here," Griggs says. "We're getting fans from all over East Northants, and from as far afield as Milton Keynes and Bedford."
It helps, of course, that the side are three points clear at the top with three games in hand, having won 10 of the first 12. They have also come through five qualifying rounds to confront Cardiff, but there is more to the Nene Park experience than what happens out on the park.
Unlike most clubs who have relocated, the ground does not resemble an architecturally challenged hypermart. The focal point is the Diamond Centre, which houses spacious offices and state-of-the-art dressing-rooms. There is also a restaurant, conference facilities, gymnasium, sauna, bars and banqueting suite that converts into a snooker venue good enough to host the European League, all generating funds.
Not to mention the toilets with nappy-changing facilities, Premiership- standard excutive boxes, club radio station carrying commentary on all Diamonds' games, an electronic scoreboard bought from Millwall - which Griggs reckons is a crowd-puller in itself - or the "Doc Shop" selling the products which have made such feats possible.
Outside, there is a full-sized, pristine practice pitch. A synthetic surface and driving range are under construction. The ratio of parking space to cars must be as good as any in Britain, and Griggs is even putting up the money to build a new road and roundabout to make access easier.
Nor is the playing side starved of cash. The manager, Roger Ashby, has twice broken the pounds 20,000 barrier. "If I thought that by spending pounds 50,000 on a player it'd get us promotion to the League, we'd do it," Griggs says.
"If you look at a team pic from our first year, in '92, there's only two faces left. From the next year it's three or four. We pay well, but they're great lads, not mercenaries. There's a real team spirit. I go on the coach to the away games, and they're all singing away."
Inevitably, he has been dubbed "the non-League Jack Walker". As with Blackburn, people also argue that the potential is strictly finite. "They say: 'You must have better things to spend your money on'. But I've no desire for huge yachts in Monte Carlo. I'm just a homely boy who enjoys doing what I do. I'm happy putting something into the community. I don't really need any more.
"I'm asked why I haven't gone back to Northampton, or to Kettering, but it's lovely to build something from nothing. I'm having great fun. Once you've spent the money, you forget you've done it. If the footwear company wanted new machinery that would take priority over football, but as long as we can do both - why not?
"I don't see why we shouldn't reach the First Division, though I accept you can go too far too fast and that you need to consolidate." Cardiff, one suspects, may not be the first League club to find that walking on air is more Rushden & Diamonds' style than consolidation.
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