The Inane Drivel Guide to Dartford

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Dartford kick off their first season in the Ryman Premier Division today, away at Hendon (Brent Cross, London). As I've mentioned previously, the step up to the Premier league means that the bookmakers now cast a keen eye over our games. The best offer on Dartford – 10/1 to win the league outright – coming away from the game victorious is about 3/2. That's probably a fair assessment, since this will be our first competitive game at this level.

The Hendon forum has thrown up this handy guide to Dartford – both the club and the town. It's funny because it's (mostly) true...


OO ARE YA?
It’s a shocking revelation, but Dartford was a relatively civilised town with middle-class enclaves until fairly recently. Bastions of middle-class non-conformity Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both from Dartford and Herr Thatchler herself once stood as a parliamentary candidate in the constituency. Speaking of The Beloved Leader, Herr Thatchler’s financial empowerment of the upper echelons of the Inner City White Trash Community allowed that particular bunch to escape Inner London and drag their ignorant carcasses to unfortunate places like Dartford... with depressingly predictable results.

Nowadays, Dartford’s... Ahem!... ever so slightly less refined. Indeed, many inhabitants of the Clitterhouse Estate would feel at home in Dartford. If throwing the WKD bottle makes the 2012 Olympics, talent scouts will be scouring Dartford for potential medallists. Ing-Ger-Lund’s national sport should definitely be in for 2012 and it’s fitting that the town’s football team is called The Darts. The svelte figure of local publican Andy “The Viking” Fordham, until recently landlord at The Rose, is the physique most locals – women especially – aspire to. The two people I know who live in Dartford are a fat hairy motorcyclist and a tattoo artist. The fact that the town’s most famous footballing son is Malcolm Allison suggests that villainy was never too far beneath the veneer.

THE CLUB
Dartford were one of England’s leading Non-League clubs in the 1930s. Not much in the trophy cabinet for a few decades until resurfacing with a couple of Southern League titles in 1974 and 1984. Promotion to the Conference saw them get a bit overambitious. Financial difficulties and exile followed. The return to the town and the building of the award-winning, ultra-green, environmentally-friendly, 4,000+ capacity Princes Park (built by a sympathetic and co-operative local council) has boosted the club enormously... though only in a town twinned with Saaf Essix could an environmentally-friendly stadium be built with 300 parking spaces for cars.
© Alan Ainsworth 2008

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