Grounds for celebration!
CASEY REFLECTS ON A DECADE OF HIGHS AND LOWS AT THE GALLAGHER
Co-owner Terry Casey says he wouldn’t change a thing as Maidstone celebrate a decade at the Gallagher Stadium.
It’s 10 years today since the ground - built at a cost of £2.9million - opened with a highprofile friendly against Brighton on July 14, 2012.
A lot has changed in the intervening years, with a £500,000 main stand extension and the construction of the £750,000 Genco Stand boosting capacity from 2,226 to 4,200.
On the pitch there have been four promotions, including two league titles, and a relegation, along with some glorious FA Cup memories.
Building the stadium, and returning Maidstone to the County Town after 24 years away, was the “absolute No.1 priority” when Casey and Oliver Ash bought the club.
“It’s been an exciting journey, 10 years of lots of emotions, lots of ups and downs, and I don’t think I’d change one bit of it,” said Casey.
“As a club and as a business, we’ve done a lot of things well and a lot of things right.
“The evidence is we hit rockbottom in the National League and bounced back a couple of years later.
“That shows we’ve got substance to us, a lot of a backbone and a terrific spirit at the club.
“There was no point Oliver and I buying the club, for whatever it was, if we weren’t going to build the ground.
“There was no point owning a football club that’s going to be playing 20 or 30 miles from its home town.
“That was the major consideration, would Oliver and I be able to fund it and work on it and ensure the team came back to the town?
“That was the absolute No.1 priority. We had to bring it back to Maidstone, or there was no point buying the club.”
Planning permission to build on Ministry of Defence land at James Whatman Way had been secured in 2004, six years before Casey and Ash’s takeover of the Stones.
There had been notable false dawns during that period, as Maidstone limped on at Sittingbourne and Ashford, but the new owners were serious about making it happen.
“We looked at it as wasteland,” recalled Casey.
“We wandered over it at weekends and thought what could happen here, what could we do here?
“One of the things we did early on was to buy the freehold. We felt that was important and would make us more solid and secure in the long-term.
“Once we started working with the MoD to secure the freehold, there was nothing going to stop us building it.
“It was just a question of money, how do we finance it? In the end, Oliver and I financed the whole thing between us rather than bringing other people or other businesses in.
“I think that was probably a good decision because we run the club in the way we run it, with integrity and honesty, and that came about because of just two people owning it.
“We’ve done an awful lot to the stadium since it opened, with the Genco Stand and extending the main stand and even this year we’re spending £50-60,000 of our money just to improve the facilities and we’re looking to develop it further.
“I look back on old film of the game against Brighton and I think every time we’ve developed and built, we’ve
done a good job, we’ve done it sensitively and, yes, I think it looks pretty good.”
The owners would like to develop the west side of the ground - the flat side purchasing scrubland from the council three years ago to make it possible.
It’s a question of money to get
the stand built, while the final piece of the puzzle is a new Town End.
“We’d like to develop the west stand if we had someone with a lot of money and, ultimately, the south stand,” said Casey.
“The stadium doesn’t look much like it did 10 years ago and I’m very much looking forward
to the next development.
“If someone came up with £800,000 we could do the west stand straight away, it’s only a question of finance.
“The problem is it wouldn’t give us greater capacity, it’s not that type of development, so it’s a difficult one to sell to people because it wouldn’t improve
our income that much. It would just look better and be more comfortable for our supporters and we’d have more seats.”
Maidstone are in pre-season action at home to Enfield on Saturday (3pm), while former Stones boss Jay Saunders brings Tonbridge to the Gallagher on Tuesday (7.45pm).