I haven't got a get-out-of-jail card, admits Cray Wanderers chairman Gary Hillman

CRAY WANDERERS chairman Gary Hillman faces make-or-break talks with Boris Johnson’s brother as he makes one last attempt to secure the club’s future.



Mr Hillman is hoping the Ryman Premier League club will be able to find a resolution to their homelessness with the support of Orpington MP Jo Johnson.

The club had high hopes of moving to a new 5,000-seater stadium, with 182 homes also built on the land at Sandy Lane in St Pauls Cray.

However, they failed to get the backing of Bromley Council in September as councillors unanimously rejected their application for a number of reasons, including the fact it was on green-belt land.

It was another chapter in the club’s bid to move back to their home area, as they groundshare with Blue Square Bet (Conference) South side Bromley. That deal ends in 2014, meaning the club are running out of time to find an alternative.

Now Mr Hillman has met with MP Johnson, the brother of the London Mayor, in a bid to gain support for the project.

“If I’m not going to get the support of the local MP, then I have got no chance of the support of Bromley’s council,” he said.

“As he’s the local MP and it’s in his ward, we’re just looking for his support to sort out the problem.

“Like everyone, he wants the club to survive. We thought we’d found the perfect place to move to. We identified this site as being the ideal site.

“Because this is his local ward, he should be able to identify or come up with a logical way how we’re going to solve this problem. We got the map out and went through the various schemes and I’m going to get back to him in three weeks’ time and hopefully we can go forward.”

Mr Hillman said there was no desire to continue groundsharing elsewhere if the Sandy Lane plan hit the buffers again as they had done so at various sites for the past 30 years.

He said: “Everyone has tried to pass the buck – can we temporarily groundshare somewhere else? We’ve been doing that since 1972 – everyone is trying to avoid the argument. The problem isn’t going away. That’s why we need to get some urgency into the situation.

“It’s just so frustrating. We’re trying to solve the problem and everyone is putting their head in the sand. Every week that goes past, it gets worse and worse.

“We wrote to the Ryman League to see which places would be suitable to groundshare. Welling was a no, Ebbsfleet was a no, Thamesmead was a no. At the moment I haven’t got a Plan X, Y or Z – I haven’t got a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
 
 Original article published by Greg Miles www.kentnews.co.uk/sport/hillman_hopes_mp_s_help_will_get_cray_back_home_1_1687707