Sean Parrish: AFC Telford goal better than Wembley
He played more than 200 games in the Football League and won a League Two play-off final at Wembley with Northampton.
But scoring the goal that earned AFC Telford promotion in their first ever season is up there with anything Bucks Hall Of Fame inductee Sean Parrish has ever achieved in the game.
The now-41-year-old, who was one of the club's first signings, netted the matchwinner against Kendal Town which earned the Bucks a 2-1 victory in the 2004/05 Northern Premier League First Division play-off final.
That win, in front of more than 4,000 people at the New Bucks Head, brought a glorious conclusion to the club's first ever season, having been born the previous spring following the demise of Telford United.
Parrish, who captained the side in their first ever competitive game earlier that season, said: "It was a great way to finish the season. To score the winning goal, I couldn't have written a script any better.
"It has got to be up there with the best moments in my career. Playing and winning at Wembley with Northampton in 1996 was the ultimate, when we beat Swansea in the League Two playoff final.
"But to have come together from where we were in pre-season – it was literally jumpers for goalposts – to scoring the winning goal was a great way to end the season."
Parrish, who also counts Shrewsbury, Doncaster and Chesterfield among his former clubs, admitted there had been little indication in the first half of the campaign that it would end so gloriously a few months later.
But a 1-0 defeat at Willenhall Town on December 30, 2004 proved the catalyst for a 19-game unbeaten run that took Telford to a third-placed finish in the division and qualification for the playoffs, where they defeated Eastwood Town in the semi-finals before seeing off Kendal.
