Canterbury City manager Ben Smith goes into Sunday’s Buildbase FA Vase Quarter Final with Biggleswade in the knowledge that it could be the clubs last game in the competition – win or lose.
For everyone involved in the Club is still reeling from Canterbury City Council’s decision to refuse the Football Club permission for a new home at Highland Court in Bridge – a decision that more than deflated every Canterbury fan coming as it did just days after the last 16 win a couple of weeks ago.
Now as the club goes into THE biggest game in its history, manager Ben Smith was still in a reflective mood when he spoke to KSN – with the Council’s decision still very much to the fore.
He told us, “When we spoke previously, I said that the decision by the Council on the Tuesday was more important than the win over Leicester on the Saturday, it truly was – and the Council have let us down! They’ve got reasons for doing it but its not the decision that we’re moaning about – it’s the way that the Club has been treated for two decades! In 1999, the then Council sold our ground for fourteen million pounds and within the deal they would find a suitable ground for the football club – twenty years on and we’re still waiting.
“Different councils; different plans but still we are NO closer to a football club in Canterbury and for a City that big not to have a Football Club is absolutely scandalous! They talk about the good that we’ve done and are doing in the Community and they sympathise. but we’ve got to the stage where words mean nothing – they have got to act quickly or the club wont be there! Its that simple and all the good things that we do in the local community, won’t be there and will not happen!”
“We’ve got a lot of volunteers who put a lot of time and effort into the Club backing a Chairman who’s been in charge for nine years now and his Company – Robinsons Solicitors – have backed the club no end and have kept it running by paying the big bills (ground-sharing etc.) – its all cost money; we cant just rock up to a pitch and play as there’s so much more behind the scenes.”
“There’s a lot of the narrow minded ignorant people that object against the club don’t see these things – they expect us to go to the local park and play on pitches there and they overlook for just how much we do in the Community and that’s for a club without its home ground – he amount of things we do is mind blowing; we’ve disability football, girls and ladies football; walking football and all our youth teams – there is so much more than the men’s first team that’s just the tip of the ice berg.”
“They are agreements in place to do even more that would be amazing for Canterbury but that won’t happen until we have our own base especially as the club financially are potentially just a couple of weeks away from closing – the Vase game on Sunday was that close from not happening!”