Danny Scopes Football Manager · Est. 2007
Vol. XIX · No. 8 Through to the final · Mon 4 May v Brentwood Updated 30 Apr 2026
The accidental manager

All I want
is all
you've got.

Four promotions. An FA Trophy final at Wembley. A Manager of the Season award. From the Sarah Moore pub in Leigh-on-Sea to Step Two of English football — the quiet, unflashy career of one of Essex non-league's true success stories.

Danny Scopes on the touchline at Billericay Town
Danny Scopes Billericay Town · 2026
Currently
Billericay Town
2025–26
Play-Off Final
Career promotions
Four
Wembley appearances
One
01The Lede

A career he never meant to have.

Danny Scopes celebrating in his Concord Rangers tracksuit
Beachboys, on the up Concord Rangers · c. 2014

There are managers who spend years plotting their route into coaching, studying badges and biding their time. And then there is Danny Scopes. He didn't really want to go into management at all.

Persuaded into the dugout at Concord Rangers in 2007 — "almost bullied", as he put it — his first phone call as the new player-manager was the one that defined everything that followed. He rang Danny Cowley. The partnership that grew out of that conversation would take a club playing in front of fifty people up three divisions, and in time send the Cowleys on a journey to Lincoln, the FA Cup quarter-finals and the Championship.

Scopes stayed put. Loyalty, in his case, has always been the foundation. Nearly two decades on, the lad from Essex who never wanted to be a manager has quietly become one of the most respected figures in non-league football.

I said, well, I need a coach and I want to play as well — so you coming in will help me. It was probably the best thing I did. Danny Scopes, on the phone call to Danny Cowley, 2007
02The Chapters

Eighteen years, three clubs, one philosophy.

Ryman Premier Manager of the Month award, January 2012, Danny Scopes & Danny Cowley
Ryman Manager of the Month · January 2012
2007 — 2015

Concord Rangers I

Player-Manager · Joint Manager (with the Cowley brothers)

It started in the Sarah Moore pub in Leigh-on-Sea. Scopes thought he was helping chairman Ant Smith pick the next manager. By the time he left, senior pros Danny Heale and Dan Trenkel had talked him into taking the job himself. Crowds of fifty. Essex Senior League. A 40th anniversary season that nobody saw coming.

  • Essex Senior League champions (2007–08)
  • Gordon Brasted Memorial Trophy
  • FA Vase quarter-finalists
  • Three promotions to National League South
Danny Scopes walking on the Wembley pitch before the FA Trophy final
Wembley · 3 May 2021
2019 — 2021

Concord Rangers II

First-Team Manager · National League South

Two pandemic-disrupted seasons at Step Two with a part-time squad and behind-closed-doors football. The headline league return looks modest. The cup record does not. The FA Trophy run, navigated across two calendar years, ended at Wembley.

  • FA Trophy finalists, 2019–20
  • Wembley appearance, 3 May 2021
  • Survived a curtailed pandemic season
  • 1.09 points per match in difficult conditions
Aveley FC trophy haul including Danny Scopes North Division Manager of the Season 2021-22
Manager of the Season · Aveley · 2021–22
2021 — 2025

Aveley FC

First-Team Manager · The defining four years

Joined the Millers in October 2021 in the Isthmian North. Took them up to Step Two and to the National League South play-offs. A first major trophy since 1990. A club-record league finish. A Manager of the Season award. Three and a half years that, in CEO Craig Johnson's words, the club "could only ever have dreamt about".

  • Isthmian North champions (2021–22)
  • Velocity Trophy winners (2022–23, 3–0 in the final)
  • Promoted to National League South via play-offs
  • National League South Manager of the Season (2023–24)
Danny Scopes celebrating a Billericay Town victory
Billericay Town · 2025–26
Sep 2025 — Present

Billericay Town

First-Team Manager · One game from the National League South

The job that had once gone elsewhere. Inherited a side with two wins from six. Eight months later: third in the Isthmian Premier, eighty-two points, twenty-four wins, +33 goal difference. Unbeaten in eleven. Nine consecutive home wins. Seventeen wins from the last nineteen.

And on Wednesday 29 April, in front of a New Lodge full house, the play-off semi-final. Three goals in the first forty minutes — Benton, Merrifield, Lewis-Burgess — then a Chatham comeback to 3–2, then the line held against late Chatham pressure. All I want is all you've got. Billericay through. One game from promotion to the National League South.

  • 3rd in Isthmian Premier (final, 25 April 2026)
  • 82 points · 24W 10D 8L · GD +33 from 42 games
  • Play-Off Semi-Final: beat Chatham Town 3–2
  • Play-Off Final v Brentwood Town · Mon 4 May
·The Backroom · New Lodge
Danny Scopes
Manager
Adam Drew
Assistant Manager
Craig Shipman
First-Team Coach
Scott Wagstaff
Analyst
Danny Scopes addressing his Concord Rangers players in the Wembley dressing room before the FA Trophy final
03 · 3 May 2021 · Bank Holiday Monday

The 2019–20 FA Trophy final, delayed by a global pandemic and finally played the following May, was the culmination of everything the second Concord Rangers spell stood for. A part-time squad. No competitive football since February. A side that, in any reasonable reading, ought to have been overrun.

Inside the changing room before kick-off, the screen carried a six-word message that had become the team's motto. All I want is all you've got. Goalkeeper Chris Haigh produced the saves of his career. The Beachboys lost 1–0 to a League Two side. They left Wembley with their ethos intact and, as Scopes put it, hungrier than they arrived.

"We say what we're about and what we stand for. We haven't got loads of money, but we survive and we're that underdog. We've got this special DNA and fighting spirit, this never-surrender attitude. We will give everything we've got every game."

Harrogate Town
1
0
Concord Rangers
Competition · FA Trophy Final Venue · Wembley Stadium Man of the Match · Chris Haigh Assistant Manager · Lee Minshull
Danny Scopes and Lee Minshull on the Wembley touchline before the FA Trophy final
The Touchline Scopes & Minshull, before kick-off
Danny Scopes on the Wembley pitch with players in the warm-up
The Walk The empty arches, the long warm-up
04The Numbers

A 45% win rate flatters nobody. Read it again.

Every club Scopes has managed has been a club punching well above its station. The cup record across all sole-management competitions runs at sixty to seventy percent. Points-per-match has improved at every stop. The line is unmistakable.

Concord Rangers
2019 — 2021 · Step 2
1.09
Points per match
P~54
W~18
D~13
L~23
Aveley FC
Oct 2021 — Jun 2025 · Steps 4 → 2
1.13
Points per match
P~111
W~50
D~24
L~37
Billericay Town
Sep 2025 — Present · Step 3
1.95
Points per match · league
P42
W24
D10
L8
Career Total
Sole management, 2019–present
~216played
~98won
~48drawn
~70lost
45win %

Records compiled from Transfermarkt match logs and the 2025–26 Isthmian Premier League final table (TheFishy, 25 April 2026). The Concord co-management era (2007–2015) — four promotions in eight years alongside Danny Cowley — is noted separately as full W/D/L records are not consolidated in a single accessible source.

05The Honours

Hardware. Earned.

Ryman Premier Division Manager of the Month award, January 2012
January 2012
Ryman Premier
Manager of the Month
Concord Rangers · with Danny Cowley
Aveley North Division Manager of the Season 2021-22 trophy and league trophy
2021 — 22
North Division
Manager of the Season
Aveley FC · also: League title, Team of the Season, Fair Play
Danny Scopes receiving an award
2023 — 24
Vanarama National South
Manager of the Season
Aveley FC · club-record league finish
06Off the touchline

The other double life.

Football is the second job, not the first. By day, Scopes is Sales Director at Essex Supplies (UK) Ltd, a cleaning and janitorial supplier serving businesses across Essex and the surrounding region for over thirty years. By night, the Billericay Town dugout. The dual life that defines non-league management.

Training sessions, away trips to Hornchurch and Cheshunt, FA Trophy Saturdays — all fitted around the Monday-to-Friday of sales targets, customer accounts and the kind of unglamorous graft that keeps the lights on at home and the boots polished at the club. It is the rhythm of football below the professional line, and Scopes has been doing it for the best part of two decades.

Home, when he is in neither, is in Essex with his wife Zoe and their two sons, Vinny and Riley. The boys came up through youth football alongside Concord kit-man Darren Leech's lad — a thread that runs through every chapter of the Wembley story, and one of the reasons Scopes cited as making the run mean what it did. We've been on park pitches, picked the dog muck up and put the goals up for years.

It is, in the end, a particular Essex story: the bloke who never wanted to be a manager, who has somehow ended up as one of the most respected in the county — while still doing his Monday-to-Friday in sales. The accidental career, sustained by the unglamorous one.

07The Creed
We approach every game like a cup final
and empty the tank.
That is all we ask.

What defines Danny Scopes is not flash or fanfare. It is consistency, loyalty, and a genuine ability to build collective belief in clubs others have written off.

Whether it was Concord rising from crowds of fifty to a Wembley final, or Aveley going from relegation favourites to National League South play-offs and a Manager of the Season award, the story is always the same: teams playing well above their station, driven by an environment their manager has carefully built around them.

The secret, in the end, is no great mystery.

Danny Scopes
Manager · Billericay Town · 2026