The non-League Wrexham? Farnham Town chairman Harry Hugo on three straight promotions and a new dream of reaching the EFL | Football News

Having sold 40 per cent of influencer marketing agency, Goat, in 2021, Harry Hugo had made his fortune at 26 – and he realised that, by the age of 30, he would have the rare luxury of not needing to work again.

So, by his own admission, he chased moments of “instant gratification”. But he also knew he needed to find a purpose.

One day, he and his friends – who had worked with him since he started his first business aged 16 – visited a Ferrari garage. He had his eyes on a 458 Spyder in black.

“My mate asked me why I was considering buying it,” he tells Sky Sports.

“My only answer was that it would be fun. That wasn’t a good enough answer, so I challenged my mates to come up with something that would provide as much fun for the money.

“The first suggestion was, why don’t we buy a football club – and I thought that was quite a good idea!”

The group built a matrix to rank the non-League clubs within a 50-mile radius of his home. Leatherhead came out on top, so Hugo followed the Tanners – then in the Isthmian Premier Division, one below the National League South – for six months.

When he met the board, there was scepticism, he says. “I get that as, one, it’s unusual for a young guy wanting to go and spend loads of money on a football club and, two, there have been a lot of negative stories in non-League, where people have put loads of money in then walked away.”

Hugo was left deflated when a deal to take over did not materialise, yet he soon realised he had not fallen in love with Leatherhead, but non-League in general and “the raw emotion, the old-school nature of football in its purest form.”

Town takeover leads to back-to-back-to-back

Number two on the matrix was Farnham Town. Hugo had grown up in local area attended school in the town – which is around 11 miles from Guildford, Surrey – so there was a tie-in. The only downside? They were another two tiers down the pyramid.

But the board were instantly receptive and a deal was completed within five weeks.

Soon, the reality of what he had inherited caught up with him.

“When we walked in, it cannot be understated how s*** it was here,” he says, overlooking the pitch at The Memorial Ground, which is looking in excellent condition, despite the intense recent heatwaves.

“It was the clubhouse, a stand behind the goal… and that was it. A concrete block wall around the side of the pitch and a fence across the top. I was embarrassed to bring my wife down here!”

Today, it is almost hard to believe it is the same stadium. But more on that shortly as, to understand why that is the case, one must look at Farnham’s incredible rise, led on the pitch by manager Paul Johnson.

In 2022/23 – Hugo’s first season – Farnham finished sixth in the Combined Counties Premier Division South.

In 2023/24, they won that same division with 108 points.

In 2024/25, they won the Isthmian South Central Division with 102 points.

And in 2025/26, they finished second to Walton & Hersham in the Southern League Premier Division South, before beating Gloucester City 5-1 in the play-off final to reach the National League South.

Before Hugo’s arrival, the club had never played above the ninth tier of English football. In 2026/27, they will play in the sixth.

Wrexham links and the value of socials

Naturally, there have been comparisons to Wrexham, who are the most high-profile example of a club achieving back-to-back-to-back promotions, from the National League to the Sky Bet Championship.

“I’m OK with that!” says Hugo, with a laugh.

“Like them, we also care about media, brand, image, experience and the biggest thing is they brought people up; they made more National League and EFL teams look at themselves and think they could be doing it.

“We’re having the same impact on teams at step three, four, five and wondering, if they did it, why can’t we?”

While the Red Dragons have their Disney+ series ‘Welcome to Wrexham’, Farnham produce ‘Non-League Diaries’, which is released weekly on YouTube.

Hugo harnessed his connections to get social media collective The Sidemen to sponsor the team in his first season, while last September, the club went viral after former Liverpool and England striker Peter Crouch walked out as a mascot as a forfeit for losing his Fantasy Football League.

From 2023 until earlier this summer, Love Island runner-up Harry Cooksley was a key member of the squad and, on TikTok, they boast over 150,000 followers.

“Social media is huge commercially, from a fan engagement and brand-awareness point of view. It’s weird the amount of people that know about Farnham Town,” Hugo adds.

“They might not have ever come, but they know Crouchy walked out in a full kit as a mascot or we won the play-off final 5-1 or we hold the British record for the most wins in a row in a league campaign. Other clubs have done things like it, but they can’t get the message out; they can’t tell the story.

“We’ve done a really good job of doing that and it’s been a major focus because it’s my background. It’s the perfect distribution channel that allows us to tell that story.”

Rapid rise forces need for rapid growth

Online, some accuse him of just throwing money at it. He accepts that was “a legitimate point” in his second year as getting out of the ninth tier became imperative.

“People who keep the lights on do an amazing job and make sure these non-League football clubs exist, then there’s the people who are trying to push it forward. That’s good for everybody,” he says.

“Farnham doing things for the first time and being as successful as we have been on and off the pitch drives everybody to be better. People have gone from hating us to admiring us because they’ve seen someone who is genuinely invested in this and wants to do it sustainably for the long-term.

“I don’t hide in a corporate box and I genuinely love football. I’m Farnham’s number one fan, and the chairman second. I’ve never been an anxious person, but I hate the 90 minutes because it means so much to me, which is why I do commentary. It’s like therapy to me because I’m so nervous!”

Farnham’s rise on the pitch has put strain – a welcome one at that – on Hugo and those off the pitch. Each promotion has brought a nine-month deadline for the club to bring their stadium up to the requirements for that level. The official capacity is currently 2,300, but by March 31 2027, it needs to be 3,000.

But they have not focused solely on that this summer. There are impressive new stands, but the whole club has received a makeover of the highest order. The transformation is striking.

“It’s constant money, but also planning. I love that, but I think it’s really important for people to understand it’s not just about winning on the pitch,” Hugo says.

“There’s so much you have to think about off the pitch if you’re as successful as we’ve been. It’s not just about throwing money at it; it’s about being strategic.

“The nice thing is we’re going to have brought a fanbase through that take nothing for granted because they’ve seen where we’ve come from. Hopefully everyone comes down to support the football club because we’re going to need to put a lot of cash back in the coffers with the work we’ve done.”

Speaking of cash, Hugo is incredibly transparent on social media with the financial side of things. He often posts details on X, highlighting the importance of the spend-per-head metric. Why?

“Because moving the dial from an average attendance of 1,000 to 1,500 is disproportionately harder than getting someone to spend £18, not £15, inside the ground. Once you get someone in and you give them opportunities to spend, that is way easier than trying to get someone brand new in.

“That’s not necessarily about putting prices up, more giving them opportunities to spend on better things.

“That metric has improved massively since we’ve been involved, without the ticket prices going up much at all. We are a cheap day out.”

The EFL is no longer just a pipe dream

Farnham’s rise has been so quick that it is hard to believe they are only two promotions from Sky Bet League Two. The ambition to get there is significant – and growing.

“The biggest thing that drives me is that Surrey doesn’t have an EFL team. That’s ridiculous,” says Hugo. “How doesn’t one of the most affluent counties, so close to London, not have one of the 92 EFL teams?!

“Woking and Sutton are in the league above us and when we started, Sutton were in the EFL and we were in step five. Now there’s one league between us. Who’s to say Farnham can’t get in ahead of all the others? Three years ago, I didn’t even consider that.

“We know how to get promotions. I know it takes everything, so much stuff that people don’t see, but we can actually stand up and say we think we can get to the EFL and we’ve proven we know how to do it, though we know it’s going to get harder.

“We are obviously going to try and get promoted again this season because that’s in our nature, but would it be the end of the world if we didn’t? Absolutely not. But we’ve only ever been promoted, so it’s going to be a weird feeling if we get to the end of the season and we don’t have a pitch invasion!

“Some clubs will go through a chairman’s lifetime and never have one – we’ve had four in four years. I’m OK with our pitch not being invaded this year! It means we’d have time to figure out our facility, get it ready, so it would be National League, EFL ready.”

A long journey undoubtedly lies ahead, but it would take a brave person to bet against Hugo and Farnham, who have already changed perceptions of what a modern non-League club can be.

Several years on from that day in the Ferrari garage, it is certainly fair to say Farnham’s young chairman has found the purpose he was seeking.