Originally Posted by
Kind of Blue
When I first moved to London about a decade ago I lived in Dulwich, not a long walk from the ground. When I first went there they were averaging crowds in the 300s and were two divisions below where they are now. Fisher’s phoenix club ground shared with them after their fall from grace, in fact I may have watched a game of theirs at Champion Hill before a Hamlet one.
It was quite incredible to see within a few years the crowd grow and the hype quietly build around the club, it was all a little surreal. When I first started going they had a small, hardy bunch of disillusioned league fans, I guess what people would describe as “hipsters” but to me just felt like the counter cultural, football fanzine spirit writ large and they mixed well with the old timers there.
I started going less and less regularly when the crowds really started to shoot up, as I go to that level of non league because you can move around very freely, plenty of space, easy to get a pint, minimal queues, relaxed, etc. They’d started to totally outgrow their ground and it really started to dampen my experience but c’est la vie.
The last game of theirs I saw was when they won promotion to the conference south, when they had a nomadic season at Tooting due to a dispute with the landowner at Champion Hill. Shortly after I moved to another part of London but I’m happy to hear they still have healthy attendances and I hope they manage to sort out a ground for the future that the fan base now deserves.
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