Hopefully next season we'll be playing back at Ide Hill, says manager Keith McGinn

The club hire the all-weather pitch at Wrotham School on Borough Green Road for around £100 per match while their clubhouse at the Ide Hill Recreation Ground at Camberwell Lane is rebuilt.

The Magpies – who were founded in 1923 - were playing in the Sevenoaks & District League three years ago and finished in sixth-place in the Haart of Kent County League Division Two West last season.

They were promoted to Division One West and are in eighth-place (out of 12 teams) following yesterday’s 4-1 home defeat to Peckham Town, which was watched by a crowd of 37 people, who took advantage of watching a game of football on a 3G pitch after the present spell of wet weather caused a high number of postponements at all levels of football in the county.

“You’ve got to remember Ide Hill is a tiny little village that’s played local football in the Sevenoaks & District standard for 90 years,” said McGinn, 50.

“It’s only in the last two years that we’ve decided as a club that to make the club survive and secure its future we had to start a youth side and make the committee stronger, build a new clubhouse, build a new pitch.

“We had a good side at the time who were keen to try to play in the County League and we moved into the County League for the first time in 90 years’ history.

“Our aim was just to try to survive and maintain our standard in the Kent County League. Saying that we’ve moved to Division One this year. We’ve lost our last two games against good opposition (Long Lane and Peckham Town), who will be near the top at the end of the season.”

McGinn was proud that 37 people decided to come and watch his side play Peckham Town yesterday, as only two games in Kent took place on grass and those were at Dover Athletic and Thamesmead Town (in Conference South and Ryman Premier League respectively).

The club could have recouped some of their expenses had they issued a match day programme for the game.

“It can cost us in the region of £180 for a home game if we play a Kent County League game and pay for the kit, pay for the pitch, which is just under 100 quid,” revealed McGinn.

“The school have been really good recently. I think they’ve reduced the rates a bit just to help us because we’ve had some problems recently but generally it’s a lovely surface, it has good changing facilities and we hope our facilities will be as good as this when we go back.”

McGinn revealed the club is going in the right direction when it comes to returning home.

He said: “We’ve got a big meeting a week Monday with the parish council (Sundridge with Ide Hill), Sport England, Football Foundation and the Kent FA and Cory Ipstock, who are putting some funds into a new clubhouse but we hope to have the money secured shortly and a lease secured from the parish council to rebuild our clubhouse.

“We’ve also got £50,000 to spend from the Olympics/Sport England to do renovation on our pitch to make it up to a better standard for the Kent County League.

“We’ve had to knock our old clubhouse down because it wasn’t fit for purpose. Hopefully we’ll get to rebuild this May-June and hopefully start of next season we’ll be playing back at Ide Hill.”

Meanwhile, the club’s website states that first team players pay a £30 signing on fee and pay £6 in subs per game and a further £3 per each one-hour training session they attend at Knole Academy in Sevenoaks.

When asked where he sees the club in ten years’ time, McGinn replied that the club must develop their own players’ from an early age.

He said: “Oh blimey, in ten years’ time? The main thing I’d like to see is a full set of youth teams. At the moment we’ve got under 7s, under 8s and under 9s and we have one under 18s, which will end this year.

“Our aim is to have just one team at each age group and then from them on progress a new team each year so we have a full youth set up and hopefully when the lads get to eighteen they’ll want to play local and they want to play for their local team in their local village and that will secure the club for a long, long time in the future.

“There’s a lot of small clubs around the Sevenoaks & District League that have folded over the years because of a lack of support, lack of facilities and poor facilities and we’ve got to make sure that we keep that standard high so the club survives and we can push on.

“I can’t see us going any higher than Kent County. We could get into the Premier – that would be our main achievement I would have thought.”

McGinn and his fellow manager Wally Paxton have both been involved with the club for 30 years and both hail from the North East.

“I was born in Consett, County Durham,” revealed McGinn.

“I’m a Newcastle United supporter and my manager Wally Paxton is from the North East as well so we’re both black and white. That’s not why the club plays in Black and White (stripes). The club have always been black and white.

“I live in Sevenoaks now, been down here for 30 years. It’s been good. We’ve both been with the club for 30 years. It’s a long time and we’ve got a lot of experience.”

Visit Ide Hill’s website: www.idehillfc.co.uk

For more details on Ibstock Cory Environmental Trust:  www.coryenvironmental.co.uk/page/Ibstock.htm