WONDER OF WHITEHAWK
And few fans look at a club with a modest ground IAN TOWNSEND takes a closer weight for the last few years... that has been punching above its
A club on the up and up
YOU’VE got no fans, you’ve got no ground.”You may be familiar with these words. Almost eight million views on YouTube and a top five single would suggest that much of the UK will have some knowledge of Gordon Hill, better known to the masses as The Wealdstone Raider, whose alcohol-fuelled rant at a football match in March 2013 went viral at the end of last year. What you may not be familiar with, however, is the football club at which he was aiming his taunts.
A suburb in the east of Brighton, little more than a mile from the city centre and a stone’s throw from the incredibly drab but bustling Brighton Marina,Whitehawk was described a few years ago by the BBC Politics Show as ‘one of the most deprived areas of Britain’.
A visit to the football club that currently bears its name might, at first glance, reinforce this view; indeed, the last stage of your journey may make you feel as if you’re following a single track road to oblivion via The Caravan Club. Once at the end of this road, the sight that greets you cannot be described as salubrious. The Enclosed Ground looks very much as if it was erected piecemeal by a collection of cowboy builders who ‘borrowed’ each section from somewhere different.
Most buildings are either of the portakabin variety or held up with scaffolding. The pitch slopes alarmingly both from end to end and from side to side. At this point, you may even find yourself sympathising with The Raider.
Despite their location, however,Whitehawk FC are far from impoverished, and seem to have an unstoppable upward trajectory.
Currently challenging at the top of Conference South, they’ve had three promotions and a third-place finish during the past five years.
Managed by former Lewes and Macclesfield manager Steve King, they’ve built a squad that should be the envy of many of their competitors. That squad includes former Crawley Town stars Sergio Torres and Scott Neilson, John Paul Kissock – who last year was playing for Oldham Athletic in League One – Sam Deering, who stepped down from Cheltenham Town, and former Crystal Palace full-back Lee Hills; a formidable line-up at this level.
If their multi-millionaire owners get their way, they may also be going places off the field, too. John Summers and Peter McDonnell have stated that they want to build a 6,000seater stadium, speak of a five-year plan to get into the Football League and compare Whitehawk to Brighton & Hove Albion as you would Espanyol to Barcelona. They also want to change the name of the club – to Brighton City.
The only blight on this ambition is that another of The Raider’s pronouncements hits close to the mark. It would be unfair to say they have no fans, but they have very few. Their average crowd so far this season sits at just over 200. They are, by some distance, the worst supported club in their league.
As you can imagine, the tiny crowds and the largess of the owners’ investment has garnered some criticism. Many of their recent signings came from full-time football. Rumours of their salaries abound in Conference South circles and the numbers mentioned, even allowing for poetic licence, cannot for one moment be covered by club income.
Patently, the owners are bankrolling the club; and they can undoubtedly afford it, their