Save Our Club

Canterbury City Football Club are a club that have a team operating within Step 5 level, playing in the Southern Counties East Football League. Only a few seasons ago we made it to the semi final of the FA Vase, one game from Wembley...

Our home ground of Kingsmead Stadium has now been re-developed for housing after being purchased by Canterbury City Council who promised to help provide a brand new “Football Hub” in the City which was hoped would become the football clubs home. The club had to fold after this purchase but reformed in 2007 with the ambition of being in a new hub within 2 years as guided by the Council.

14 years later and after several rejections, we have hit a brick wall. We have done everything we can to adjust to the requirements of planning permission requirements. However we have now been informed that we need to wait another 3 years before submitting a planning application. We have been deprived of our funding that we heavily rely on as a result of this.

Because we don't have our own facility, we are required to ground share which isn't a cheap expense. As with any other club we have training facility costs to pay, officials and everything else associated with running a semi professional team. We are now faced with the reality of reducing our playing budget from a low amount to £0 just to try and stay as a member of the league.

This is not unique to other clubs we realise. However with a City the size of Canterbury, it is astonishing that a National League set up club does not have its own facility in its own City and has been held back through no fault of our own.

We have tried and exhausted other avenues, however the fact remains we have been let down and now face the very real threat of losing our team from the league unless we can generate some income. We obviously require more than our target for the reasons outlined above. However the target set is one that will allow us to operate for the rest of this season without any major disruption to our squad, which frankly we will lose to other teams within our division. Half the amount will allow us to just operate.

Thank you in advance for any donation you can help with. We hope we can continue as a club and fight to ensure that our City is recognised with what it deserves. We don't think there are any other Cities in the UK that don't have a club homed within their boundary. Whilst we exist, we have the hope we can achieve our aim.