Part of the Football Focus series in and around Watford, one for each current football league club.
Leyton Orient Football Club is a professional football club based in Leyton, London, England, who compete in League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system. They are the second oldest football club in London, and are known to their fans by their nickname "the O's". The club's home colours are all red and they have played home matches at Brisbane Road since 1937, having previously played at Millfields and Lea Bridge Road.
Founded in 1881 as the Glyn Cricket Club, the club began playing football as Orient in 1888 and joined the London League in 1896 after success in the Clapham & District League. They adopted the name Clapton Orient two years later and were elected into the Football League in 1907. Relegated out of the Second Division in 1929, the club finally settled on the name Leyton Orient after World War II. They won the Third Division South title in 1955–56 and secured promotion out of the Second Division in 1961–62, though were relegated out of the First Division after just one season, and suffered a further relegation in 1966. Orient went on to win the Third Division under the stewardship of Jimmy Bloomfield in 1969–70 and spent the 1970s in the second tier, winning two London Challenge Cups and reaching the 1977 Anglo-Scottish Cup final and 1977–78 FA Cup semi-finals, before being relegated in 1982 and again in 1985.
Orient won promotion out of the Fourth Division via the play-offs in 1988–89, though were relegated again in 1995. Barry Hearn became chairman in 1995 after the club was put on sale for £5 by then-chairman Tony Wood, a period covered by the television documentary Orient: Club for a Fiver, made by production company Open Media for Channel 4.
They went on to win promotion out of League Two with Martin Ling in 2005–06, before Hearn sold the club to Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti, who presided over two relegations in three years under 11 managers. Nigel Travis took over running the club in 2017 and appointed Justin Edinburgh as manager, and under this stable leadership the club went on to reach the 2019 FA Trophy final and win promotion back into the Football League as champions of the National League in 2018–19.