The following article by Mark Fleming has been taken from the Daily Express dated Tuesday 12th October 2004.

The new, space-age super-stadium under construction at Wembley is just a couple of miles away. And three or four miles off in the opposite direction, work is under way on Arsenal's amazing new home at Ashburton Grove.

Sandwiched between these examples of north London's claim to be the powerbase of English football is poor old Hendon.

The club are due to celebrate their centenary in a couple of years. Yet the non-League outfit might not live to see it through to their birthday party - all because plans to move away from their crumbling ground have become bogged down in council red-tape and political point-scoring.

While two great homes of football are going up, Hendon's is falling down.

Their Claremont Road ground has hosted amateur internationals, FA Cup ties and Olympic qualifiers. But such days are long gone.

However the club has found a champion at last, in the form of local hero David Bedford, who is Hendon born and bred.

His parents still live in his childhood home just round the corner from Claremont Road, and Bedford has become vice-chairman of the club.

This is a man who is used to winning.

On the track, he set the 10,000 metres world record in 1973. In the committee room, he works tirelessly as the London Marathon's race director. In the courtroom, he successfully won his battle with a telephone company for ripping off his image of long hair and droopy moustache.

The hair and moustache are still impressive, if greyer. And Bedford is as passionate as ever about his desire to move Hendon away from their delapidated home into a new stadium at Copthall athletics track a few miles away.

"I have been a supporter since I was eight, when my father and our next-door neighbour took me," said Bedford.

"I remember the first game under floodlights, with 5,000 fans in to see Wolves. Over the years I've kept in touch but have only got involved recently because I can see what's going to happen.

"The club is at a crossroads and I want to help out. The key is moving on, and then selling the ground to raise the money to save the club."

The chances of survival hinge to some degree on a meeting of Barnet COuncil's planning committee next Monday.

If they approve plans to build houses, flats and an old people's care home on the site of the old ground, Hendon will be safe. They will then sell the land to the council and use the money to refurbish their new home.

If the plans are vetoed, however, the future is bleak. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, the fate of one of Britain's famous old non-League clubs is being decided by local politics.

"It all comes down to the decision on the development," Bedford said, "The club are on a knife-edge. If the decision goes one way, the club has a future. But if it goes against us, then we might have to fold.

"We simply cannot stay at our existing ground at Claremont Road. That simply is not an option.

"The chairman, Ivor Arbiter, has been putting his own money into the club for years, but there just isn't any mkore. Closing down is an option but staying where we are just isn't.

"It's terrible for a club who are nearing their centenary.

"But just what is more important? Securing the long-term future of the club or having one last season at the old ground before closing down?"

Bedford, along with the chairman, is firmly committed to the move despite some local protests from diehards who want the club to stay where they are.

Dreams at Claremont Road are far more modest than in the temples of football that are being constructed around Hendon.

But in some respects the future of the game depends as much on the likes of this famous old club as it does on the stunning stadiums of tomorrow.