For Maidstone United, or the club formerly known by that name that no longer exists, the peak was also the beginning of the doom. In 1989, after automatic promotion and relegation from non-league to the Football League had been established, Maidstone won the Conference. They were up in the league, whether it made sense or not.
In their first season, they took the Fourth Division playoff semi-final against Cambridge to extra-time. Dion Dublin and co. would do for them. Worse would soon follow. The worst would come next.
By then, Maidstone United had already moved to Dartford and sold their ground because it was not good enough for league football. It would take them 24 years to get back home for good.
They would also be expelled from the Football League and go extinct, be forced to use a youth club in Maidstone Invicta and then subsequently change the name. Maidstone United are back in the FA Cup third round for the first time since 1987; even that’s not quite what it seems.
In 1992, as the Premier League breakaway was being formalised and then-eye-watering figures discussed, the 22 clubs rejected a £13m sponsorship deal with Bass because it was deemed too low. On the day of the first Premier League fixtures, Maidstone were due to play Scunthorpe United in the Fourth Division.
With bills stacking up and only two registered players, the game was cancelled and Maidstone would be kicked out the league. The established pattern, of great extravagance at the top and comparative paupers at the bottom, had been set in stone.
Mistakes were made. The owners had spent £400,000 on land to build a new stadium but planning permission was rejected. Outlandish plans were rejected.
John Waugh, a new chairman, tried to move the club to the north east of England but the league refused to accept such a situation. The club had to remain in Kent and yet Kent held no viable future. A club statement made the sorrow clear in four words: “Time has run out”.
In 2023, Maidstone United are reborn. Starting in the Kent County League Fourth Division, they resolved to rebuild the club and make good the original promise and overachievement.
It took them six years to get out of the Kent League and into the Isthmian League system, another eight to reach National League South level. Twice they have got back to the National League Premier; twice they have finished bottom and been relegated back after their first season.
But do not mistake these setbacks as relative failure. Maidstone United are here – that in itself is a cause for celebration. They are also run sustainably, because what else can you do when your previous iteration was made extinct? Never again will that happen.
At the last count, Maidstone announced a profit for the 10th season in a row. Few others around them can say the same – particularly during Covid – although the latest relegation season may just have caused the run to end. In those circumstances, FA Cup runs like theirs are gold dust. They have already earned around £125,000 in prize money.
Now Maidstone welcome Stevenage at home knowing that they could almost double it. It should be a cause of great lament to the game that the tie will not be televised live and Maidstone must be cursing the elite-club focus. But they keep on keeping on and there’s always Match of the Day.
“I haven’t been here for a long time, but the way that the football club is run is based on its history,” says former Premier League player Craig Fagan, who was appointed as the assistant manager in February 2023.
“They are trying to do everything properly. People get paid on time, which the owners are incredibly strict on – a lot of football clubs don’t do that. They don’t want to run the club at a loss. They have learnt from the lessons of the past. That’s everything here.”
As ever, there are pillars of a club’s existence whose names will be revered long after they have left. The work done by owners Terry Casey and Oliver Ash, who took over the club in 2010, is best seen in the home ground that Maidstone moved into, finally, in 2012.
They had shared with Sittingbourne twice and Ashford Town but, thanks to the owners, to fundraising and a grant from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund, the Gallagher Stadium is now a community centre and home to a football club whose overarching aim is that they will never disappear again.
George Elokobi is on his way to earning roughly similar status, having ended his career at Maidstone, winning the National league South title and scoring in the final game of his career. When Hakan Hayrettin left as manager in January 2023, Elokobi stepped up as caretaker and has been in permanent charge for 10 months. The aim is promotion to the National League again, via the playoffs if necessary. Yeovil Town are flying ahead in the automatic sport, for now.
But none stand taller than Bill Williams here, a Maidstone legend who runs like a vein through the bad times and good. Williams played for Maidstone. He managed the club three times, including during those awful final months that he described as like losing a loved one and hit him so hard according to those around him.
Since 2010, he has been the club’s general manager and the director of football. He, more than anyone else, is responsible for this town having a football club at all and one it can be deeply proud of. This is his day.
“Bill sits in an office with me and George, the goalkeeper coach and the head of recruitment,” says Fagan. “The amount of knowledge that man has is incredible. You just sit there and pick his brains – it’s so good to have him in the room. He knows the club inside out, and the detail he can give you about the area and what this football club means to people is like nothing else.”
FA Cup runs like these, the first time since their reformation that Maidstone have reached the third round and the first time even in the competition proper since 2019, have a tangible difference: the money, the televised highlights, the expression of what the club now stands for, the recognition in the minds of potential signings.
But more than the present or the future, they are rewards for what was done in the past, those long months when days like these were barely even a dream at all, work done by an army who remain nameless on a national scale but are cherished by all who know the commitment they have made.
After the wins over Chesham United and Barrow in the previous rounds to create this astonishing chance, Fagan remembers learning just how much it all meant. Only then could he truly get it.
“It was the simple fact that so many different people in so many different roles were extremely emotional. I just hadn’t seen it before. The owners, Bill and George, of course. But all the other staff too, right down to people working in the bars. Some of these people haven’t seen Maidstone in the third round in their lifetimes. It means so much because of where this club has had to come from and the work put in to make it happen.”
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