Football in Kent

This was not true between the years 1989 and 1992, when Maidstone United were members of the Football League.

Maidstone United went bankrupt during the 1991–2 season. They were said to have become committed, in their efforts to gain promotion to the League, to a level of spending that became unsustainable when attendances fell in the face of disappointing results. Their collapse led the League authorities to rule that subsequent Conference champions would not be admitted to the League unless they had a stadium capacity of at least 6,000, with 1,000 seats, by 31 December of their title–winning season. Wycombe Wanderers met the new condition in 1992–3, but in the following years Kidderminster Harriers, Macclesfield Town and Stevenage Borough all failed to do so and were denied promotion.

Maidstone United were revived in 1992 through an effective take–over of a local youth team known as Maidstone Invicta. They currently play in the National League (the fifth tier).

A lesser–known fact about football in Kent is that Faversham Town is the only club that is permitted by the Football Association to use the royal arms of England – the famous three lions – as its badge. The club badge imitates the Faversham town crest, which is believed to date from the reign of King Edward I (1272–1307).

Founded in 1884, Faversham Town is the oldest of the three Kent clubs mentioned so far. Gillingham FC was founded in 1893, as New Brompton FC; the present name was adopted in 1912. The original Maidstone United FC was founded in 1897.

As well as the new Maidstone United, two other Kent clubs currently play in the National League: Dover Athletic (founded in 1983) and Ebbsfleet United (founded in 1948 as Gravesend & Northfleet). Ebbsfleet made headlines in 2007 when the website MyFootballClub became its majority shareholder. This arrangement lasted only five years: after initial success, with victory in the FA Trophy in 2008, MyFC membership fell from a peak of 32,000 to a reported 1,300 in the summer of 2012. The website sold its stake to a Kuwaiti consortium in 2013. Shortly afterwards, MyFC agreed a sponsorship deal with Slough Town FC, which has continued until the present day.

You can read more about the MyFootballClub experiment in an interview with its founder Will Brooks, on the football fan website The Blizzard (dated 4 September 2017).