Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
City dare to dream of the big league
HARRY BELL
The stands flecked with maroon shirts, the chants of “City! City!” resounding around its Highland Court arena, a crowd on tenterhooks – and then bang! The big lad up front connects perfectly with a cross from the left.
Seconds later, the referee blows the final whistle. Canterbury City Football Club have won promotion to League 2, the fourth tier of English football for the 2028/29 season.
Within days an open top bus parade wends it way through the city as cheering fans waving maroon flags roar their approval at this first foray into league football.
Club chairman Tim Clark – the man whose vision and tenacity made it all possible – wears a permanent smile across his face.
All right, I’m jumping ahead a few years here. And I’m also making some gigantic leaps of the imagination.
After all, Canterbury City FC plays in the Southern Counties East Football League and doesn’t even have its own ground.
But the news which emerged last week about a new football stadium for Canterbury City at Highland Court in Bridge is exceedingly encouraging.
The club has also managed to win the support of Mark Quinn at Quinn Estates, comfortably the most significant developer in the district right now, who has agreed to sponsor the team.
Tim has big ambitions for the club. After winning planning permission later this year, he is hoping the stadium is ready by 2019 with football in the National League (formerly the Conference) a target within five years.
And then we can really start dreaming. And why not? Football – indeed all sport – is full of improbable stories.
No one thought Leicester would win last year’s Premier League. No one thought Denmark, who only qualified because of the war in Yugoslavia, would win the European Championships in 1992.
Or what about Wimbledon’s “Crazy Gang” who took on and beat Liverpool, the most powerful team in England and one of the best sides in the world, in the 1988 FA Cup final?
Just over a decade earlier Wimbledon were a non-league outfit, only winning election to the old Division 4 for the 197778 season.
But that team that strode out on the Wembley turf pulled off the impossible dream. And the likes of John Fashanu, Vinnie Jones, Dennis Wise and Terry Gibson became not just footballers, but household names – as did the two Wimbledon heroes Dave Beasant, who saved a John Aldridge penalty, and Lawrie Sanchez, who scored the only goal.
The journey Wimbledon took is improbable and the journey Canterbury must take even just to get to Conference level will be equally so.
At the top, I gave you a glimpse into an imagined future, but it is a future which I hope is realised. We ought to support Canterbury City in any way we can.
More importantly, we ought to dare to dream.