Words & Pictures to follow: Dartford vs Cray Valley PM

With practically no matches on in London this weekend, it's off to Kent for a trip to the other side of the river.

Some non-league names are just… doughtier than others. Kettering Town. Worcester City. Dulwich Hamlet. All have had their crises in the past, but all are still with us. They are the stout yeomen of the football world. And right there among them are Dartford Football Club. The Darts. Onomatopoeically blunt, yet also a club who play at a genuinely and groundbreakingly progressive stadium, and in a town which gave the world what was at the time the most rebellious band in the world.

There are strangely few games in London this weekend. In the Premier League and Championship combined, only QPR at home. In the FA Cup First Round there are none whatsoever, with the nearest game to the capital taking place on the other side of Hertfordshire, at Stevenage. Even in the Isthmian League Premier Division there are only three, at Carshalton, Cray Wanderers and Dulwich Hamlet. And I’ve already been to Dulwich, this season. There’s only Walton & Hersham across the two top divisions of the Southern League.

And I’m not inclined to go much lower than that again, this week. There were 115 of us at Redbridge last weekend, and while I’m happy to go almost as low as it’s possible to go in terms of the football that I watch, sometimes I just want to lose myself in (a bit of a) crowd. And there will be a crowd at Dartford. It will only be hundreds rather than thousands, and they may be somewhat grumpy, if the team’s last couple of years is anything to go on, but it will feel a tiny bit like an event, and that’s something. Other people will join me as I walk from the railway station to the ground. There may be a queue to get in. There will be a PA guy. That sort of thing.

Dartford have had periodic crises throughout their history, the most severe of which came in 1992, when they were almost swept under by the death of the original Maidstone United. Maidstone had moved to ground-share at Dartford at their Watling Street ground upon promotion to the Football League in 1989 because Maidstone’s London Road ground wasn’t fit for the higher level. 

But by the summer of 1992 Maidstone were in desperate financial trouble, and that August they folded. They’d already sold the ground improvements made to Watling Street to Dartford, and this level of debt was enough to almost push the Darts out of business as well. The Watling Street ground had to be sold and the team was demoted from the Southern League Premier Division to the Kent County League, missing out the 1992/93 season altogether. If anything, it’s little short of a miracle that they pulled through in any way whatsoever. 

Somehow or other, the bad luck didn’t end there. With Watling Street lost, Dartford went to groundshare at Erith & Belvedere FC, but in 1997 they found themselves homeless again after a fire destroyed the stadium. This time they had to cross the river, first to Thurrock, where they shared with Purfleet FC, before making a return journey back to Kent to play at Gravesend & Northfleet. 

In November 2006, they finally returned home following an absence of more than fourteen years, and to a ground unlike any other in the country. The stadium roof had a living roof, providing a natural air filtration system, solar panels, a water recycling system, low energy lighting, increased fabric insulation, and energy-efficiency everywhere. Move over Dale Vince, there’s a new sheriff in town.

On the pitch, the team’s revival was slow. It took until 2008 for them to get back into the Isthmian League Premier Division and until 2010 to get into the National League South, the equivalent level to that at which they’d been playing when they were suddenly thrust into crisis in 1992. They ended up playing three seasons of National League football between 2012 and 2015, finishing as high as 8th in their first season at that level since 1986, and upon relegation back they were regulars in the National League South play-offs, with four losing appearances, and finishing as runners-up twice.

The last of these failures seems to have hit the club hard. They were beaten 5-3 on penalty kicks in the semi-finals by St Albans City in 2023 after having finished as runners-up but, having failed to finish below 10th in the table in the previous eight years, the following season they were relegated into the Isthmian League after having finished 21st in the table. And this season has thus far been pretty underwhelming as well. Going into this match they’re in 14th place in the table; not the sort of position that a freshly-relegated team would wish to find itself. 

From a visiting point of view Dartford has things to recommend it, should you happen to be exactly the sort of person that I am. I may not be able to get anywhere near the famous tunnel–and let’s be realistic here, that’s for the best for all of us–but I should be able to see a BLOODY MASSIVE BRIDGE, and as an enjoyer of modern, slightly strange looking statues, there’s a lot to be said for the statue of Mick Jagger and Keith Richard in the town centre. The ground is a not-unreasonable twenty minute walk from the station, and I can probably easily be there for noon. What could possibly go wrong? 

Well, actually, there is something. I have to run to a very limited budget and have to book trains in advance in order to save money, and my train back to the coast on Saturday evening is at 18.45. Now, Dartford to London Victoria in an hour and three-quarters sounds easily doable, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t necessarily, when you start to break it down. There are regular trains from Dartford to London Bridge, and after the match they depart at 17.20 and 17.35. The 17.20 gets to London Bridge at 17.55. The 17.35 gets me there at 18.14. The tube journey to Victoria is twenty minutes. How lucky you feelin’, punk? 

Should I miss this train, I’ll have to buy another single ticket and that will set me back thirty-odd quid. In other words, I can’t afford to miss this train. Fifty minutes is plenty of time to get to Victoria, get on the platform, and get on it. Half an hour, and I’ll be at best like Michael Caine in The Fourth Protocol, and at worst (and, let’s face it, considerably more likely) like John Cleese in Clockwise. Can I make it? Stay tuned to find out!

Words and pictures to follow, on Sunday.