Zero Goals, 43,000 Fans, and Collin Andeng-Ndi: How Southend United Won the FA Trophy

Blue-and-white scarves raised in a celebrating crowd inside a vast national-final stadium bowl at golden hour

Southend United are FA Trophy winners. The Shrimpers beat Wealdstone 4-2 on penalties on 17 May 2026 at Wembley Stadium, after ninety minutes of football produced no goals and a great deal of tension in front of 43,306 people.

The decisive contribution came from goalkeeper Collin Andeng-Ndi, who saved two penalties in the shootout to hand his side the trophy. Gus Scott-Morriss stroked in the winning kick. Wealdstone, to their considerable credit, got 43,000 people to Wembley and lost in the cruellest way the game has to offer.

A Final That Refused to Be Decided by Football

Both sides had clear moments in ninety minutes and neither could convert them. That is not a criticism — a final played under this much pressure, between two sides this evenly matched, tends to be decided by nerves and margins rather than quality.

Southend came within inches of opening the scoring on six minutes. Gus Scott-Morriss played Harry Cardwell in down the right channel, and Cardwell's cross-shot forced Wealdstone goalkeeper Dante Baptiste into a fine save — the ball deflecting onto the far post. It was the kind of near-miss that can define finals if the eventual result goes the other way.

Wealdstone came close just before half-time. Left back Anthony Georgiou's fierce effort took a deflection that wrong-footed everyone, and it needed a brilliant one-handed save from Andeng-Ndi to keep the game goalless at the interval.

In the second half, Southend hit the woodwork again. A cross from substitute Keenan Appiah-Forson bounced back off the crossbar on 58 minutes. The game continued to carry the nervous, compressed energy of a cup final where both teams know the difference between winning and losing will come down to a single moment.

That moment, eventually, was a penalty spot.

Three Kicks and a Double Save

The shootout began with Jack Bridge converting for Southend. Then Andeng-Ndi earned his afternoon's wages.

Olufela Olomola stepped up for Wealdstone. Andeng-Ndi saved it. Wealdstone scored their next. Joe Gubbins converted for Southend. Then Jack Hinchy took Wealdstone's following penalty — and Andeng-Ndi saved that one too. By the time Gus Scott-Morriss stepped up to take the fifth kick, with Southend leading 3-2 in the shootout, the match was effectively his to finish.

He finished it.

Scott-Morriss's decisive penalty, in front of 43,306 supporters at Wembley, ended a final that had been tense for the full ninety minutes and delivered its drama through the brutal arithmetic of a shootout rather than a goal.

Andeng-Ndi spoke to TNT Sports afterwards, describing the win as an "unbelievable feeling." Given that he had just saved two penalties at Wembley to deliver a major trophy to his club, that assessment seems fair.

Southend United's Long Road Down Here

There is a specific kind of bittersweet attached to watching Southend United play non-league football. Not because they do not deserve to be there — they absolutely do — but because of what it took to get them here.

Southend United spent 101 years in the Football League. One hundred and one years. They were a League One club. And then, in the space of two seasons in 2020 and 2021, amid deep financial turmoil that pushed them to the brink of extinction, they suffered consecutive relegations and fell out of the EFL entirely.

Dropping from League One to the National League in two seasons is a five-tier fall. The human cost of that — the jobs lost, the supporters who had watched their club in Football League football their entire lives suddenly watching it at Step 1, the volunteers and backroom staff who held things together while the ownership situation imploded — is not captured in a league table.

What is captured in a league table, in May 2026, is that Southend United are the holders of the Isuzu FA Trophy. Their first-ever FA Trophy, won at Wembley in a penalty shootout, five years after dropping out of the Football League.

That is not a consolation prize. It is a proper piece of silverware, won against a quality Wealdstone side, in front of the kind of crowd most non-league clubs never see. Southend's supporters deserve to treat it as such.

What Gary Waddock Built at Wealdstone

The result was hard on Wealdstone, and that needs saying clearly.

Manager Gary Waddock took charge at Harrow Road in February with the Stones sitting fourteenth in the National League table. What followed — a Trophy run that ended at Wembley in a penalty shootout — is no small achievement. Getting a side who were mid-table in winter to a national final by May requires not just tactical intelligence but the ability to make a group of players believe in something they could not have seen coming when the season started.

Wealdstone reached the final by beating Marine in the semi-final, securing a 94th-minute goal from Micah Obiero to get past a Neil Young-led side. The Stones had earned their Wembley place the hard way. They did not look out of their depth when they got there.

At Wembley, they were not outplayed. They hit the post themselves. They created chances. The penalty shootout was not a verdict on which team was better on the day — it was an arbitrary settling of a tight, competitive final. Losing in that fashion, after getting forty-three thousand supporters to Wembley, is a brutal end to a brilliant second half of the season.

The Stones will be back.

Why 43,306 Matters

The most important number from the 2026 FA Trophy final is the attendance: 43,306.

That number does a specific piece of work whenever it appears in the conversation about the value of non-league football. The standard dismissal from people who do not pay attention — that non-league is a rounding error, that nobody goes, that it does not matter — cannot survive 43,306 people choosing to watch a cup final that does not involve a single EFL club.

Non-League Finals Day at Wembley has, over the years, grown into something genuinely significant. The combination of the FA Trophy and FA Vase finals creates a day that matters — to the clubs involved, to the supporters who make the journey, and to the volunteers who have spent seasons raising money, marking pitches, running tea huts, and selling programmes to fund the journey to this point.

Forty-three thousand people did not go to Wembley by accident. They went because non-league football earns its supporters the hard way — through authentic football, in real communities, played by people who want to be there rather than people who have been placed there by a spreadsheet.

Southend United will carry this trophy into the 2026-27 season. Whatever comes next for them — EFL restoration remains the long-term aim — they have given their supporters something real to hold onto.

And a goalkeeper called Collin Andeng-Ndi, who saved two penalties at Wembley and described the feeling as unbelievable, has earned himself a permanent place in Roots Hall folklore.

Up the volunteers. Non-league — making the difference.