Kingstonian were once a staple of non-league football: their own 4,850-capacity ground, a passionate local community and a cabinet full of FA Trophies and Surrey Senior Cups.
They finished fifth in the Conference (the old National League) in 2000, reached the FA Cup fourth round in 2001, and were dreaming of the Football League.
But then it all fell apart. They sold their Kingsmeadow stadium to AFC Wimbledon, and were allowed to stay as tenants. Then it was sold to Chelsea, and they were told to leave to make way for the Blues’ women’s side.
A succession of ground-shares followed, few anywhere near the Ks’ spiritual home, leading to dwindling attendances, a rift between supporters and ownership, and an acceptance among fans that the club will probably dissolve in the next 10 years.
“A miracle might happen. Chelsea might suddenly realise that they have a lot of skin in this game, frankly,” Richard Exworthy, the head of the Kingstonian Supporters’ Club, tells i.
It was when the Blues bought Kingsmeadow in 2017 that Ks were forced to leave their home of 30 years. Onto their fourth ground-share next season, Kingstonian fans now find themselves playing in the seventh tier at Raynes Park Vale, 40 minutes on the bus from Kingston town centre and not even in the borough.
“I won’t go to another league game at home until we’re playing back in the borough of Kingston,” Exworthy adds. “It’s very sad.”
It has not escaped the notice of Ks fans that Chelsea Women increasingly play big games at Stamford Bridge, and have only played one home game at Kingsmeadow on a Saturday this season.
He says: “Now if Chelsea could wake up to the fact that the women’s team play on a Sunday and that ground-sharing with a non-league team who play on a Saturday makes perfect sense…
“We’ve tried to convince Chelsea that it’s even in their PR best interests to see Kingstonian return to Kingsmeadow because otherwise they will have the death of a club partly on their hands.”
Chelsea declined to comment on the possibility when approached by i.
That FA Cup in 2001 was a memorable run. Ks came within a few minutes of the fifth round, but for Bristol City’s Tony Thorpe to grab a last-minute equaliser at Ashton Gate and force a replay, although they did get their 15 minutes of fame live on Sky Sports.
Martin Tyler was on commentary that day and, by coincidence, a few years later he found himself on the coaching staff at Kingstonian, working under Alan Dowson.
Now 78, Tyler is retired from commentary but can still be found at non-league grounds as a punter, even on bitterly cold midweek nights when a seat on the sofa in front of the Champions League might seem preferable.
“I’m saddened by what’s happened [at Kingstonian] – but the one thing is that it’s the circle of life maybe. I hope that they will find a way back towards where they were before,” Tyler tells i.
The spiral started just two years after that cup run, when a resurgent Wimbledon offered Rajesh Khosla, then chairman about whom you will struggle to find a good word said among Ks fans, a reported £2.5m for the stadium.
“When we were there, we didn’t have a home because it was AFC Wimbledon’s ground – but in seven years there was never any suggestion of playing anywhere else, and at least it was in the borough,” Tyler adds.
“Now the fans are heartbroken. They don’t really know from season to season, maybe from month to month, where it’s all going to end up.”
Wimbledon’s good fortune of finding a non-league ground to buy at just the right time was followed by finding a super-club in 2017 willing to take it off their hands at more than double what they paid for it a few years later.
Chelsea turned up with a cheque for nearly £7m, a sum that would fund half of Wimbledon’s new ground at Plough Lane, an offer too good to refuse.
Kingstonian meanwhile were turfed out.
Jon Tolley, a former Liberal Democrat councillor in Kingston and long-time Ks fan, tells i: “Wimbledon got double good luck and Kingstonian got double bad luck. That’s life. We’re due some luck.
“The [Kingstonian] directors at the time put out a public statement saying ‘It’s in the best interest of Kingstonian to leave Kingsmeadow’ which is something that no fan really thought, but it seems that that was part of what they had to do to get the blood money, if that’s how you want to say it.”
The “blood money” was an act of generosity on the part of Wimbledon, who recognised the damage that would be done to Kingstonian by the deal.
They left, effectively, an endowment of over a million pounds to Kingstonian, with instructions that the funds be used for ground costs, either rental or construction.
There was also a stipulation that up to £40,000 a year could be drawn down to cover running costs of the club, an allowance that it was recently revealed has been used every year since Chelsea took over Kingsmeadow in 2017.
That allowance runs out this season. Ks will lose, effectively, £40,000 of revenue and their supporting fund is now closer to £650,000.
And at what cost? Leaping from ground-share to ground-share some not even in the borough of Kingston and none with the same capacity of nearly 5,000 has almost completely eroded the authenticity of the “fan experience”.
While the sky-rocketing price of top-flight football has triggered a boom in non-league attendances – some eighth-tier clubs get as many as 2,000 supporters on a Saturday – Kingstonian’s fans feel entirely cut out of their club, far from its traditional home and without any kind of identity.
“All these Chelsea fans should be coming should be coming to Ks. But we need a home and we need a way of saying to them ‘Come here every week’,” says Taimour Lay, a barrister who was part of a small group of locals who tried to rescue the club with their own money but were turned down.
“Being able to go into the local community and say, ‘Look, we’re 10 minutes down the road’… but at the moment, we’re an hour down the road. So it’s just pointless.
“There’s nobody under 16 at our games, there just isn’t. That whole generation has been lost. And if I was 16 now, I wouldn’t be going to Ks. I went to Ks because it was down the bottom of my road.”
On the face of it, Kingstonian has all the hallmarks of another historic club about to be dissolved, but “the Wombles money”, as supporters often call it, is keeping them afloat – just.
“We’ve probably got another 10 years before we’re going bust,” Tolley says.
“But that’s the problem. The existential nature of it is that we’ll have 40 fans at games – and I’ve been to games this season, where the official attendance is 180 or something like that, but you count the crowd and it’s less than 100 because they include season ticket holders and complimentary tickets who didn’t turn up to make it seem less embarrassing.
“So yes, the legal entity of Kingstonian FC Limited exists, but that’s not the club that I fell in love with. That is dead already.
“I think there’s always space for Kingston’s football club, but under this ownership, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
He adds: “The money has actually turned us into a zombie club, because you have a board of directors who just use the money to keep the club going, rather than build a future.”
The current ownership is led by Yioryos Vasilaras, for years a minority stakeholder and now, he claims, a majority one, although there are four directors now each with shares in the club.
After relegation, Vasilaras posted a 3,000-word statement on the club’s website, admitting they had expected and even planned to go down, but offering a glimmer of hope in the form of three potential sites for a new stadium.
Tolley adds: “[Yioryos] may well know all the names of all the players, but in my opinion he’s got no understanding of how to build a standing on social media, of how to get people onside, of how to build a movement, of how to get support from the Council or the FA to get the grants to plug into the money which is existing there.”
Not all of Ks’ problems can be laid at Vasilaras’s door, but their more recent malaise can: a recent survey run by the supporters’ club found that dissatisfaction with the club’s directors as the biggest reason for non-attendance, along with the poor communication from management to supporters, the poor matchday experience and the quality of football on offer.
“I usually attempt to bring friends along to games,” one respondent said.
“But the past two seasons have been nothing short of depressing and so I haven’t bothered.”
Vasilaras’s lengthy statement after the club’s relegation was confirmed earlier this month insisted problems pre-dated his tenure as chairman.
“The money was not there for us to keep spending what we were spending, it just wasn’t sustainable,” Vasilaras said, insisting the drop to Step 4 was “inevitable”.
“The combination of a horrendous run of results in the League, FA Cup and FA Trophy, plus heavily reduced ‘home’ attendances this season at Tooting and Mitcham have made it very difficult for us as a club financially.”
Fans, those that remain, are up in arms. A recent game at Lewes was dominated by 12 away fans wearing t-shirts that spelled out “SACK THE BOARD”.
In response, Vasilaras has said he will “not hesitate to impose long-term bans on any individuals who individually or collectively continuously create a negative atmosphere at our matches”. It smacks of “the beatings will continue until morale improves”.
Help was previously offered by a group known as Kingston Bridge Holdings (KBH). A small cabal of local business owners and fans offered an investment of around £150,000 over five years to keep the club running and to work towards finding a solution to their homelessness.
Lay, with his legal expertise and love for the club, was one of them.
“They were always reluctant and slow,” Lay says. “It took months and months to get any information or answers out of them.”
i has made multiple attempts to contact Vasilaras, but had no response.
No matter what, they will play next season at Raynes Park Vale’s ground – “a cow field,” Exworthy calls it.
But it is a club that Ks supporters eye with some jealousy: former Liverpool player John Scales is involved as are, slightly bafflingly, a group of American investors. Jordan Gallagher plays for them too, brother of Chelsea’s Conor, who is thought to have helped the club out financially too.
Kingstonian can only dream of such good luck.
“We’re due some.”
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