VS SITTINGBOURNE
ISTHMIAN LEAGUE | SOUTH EAST DIVISION SATURDAY 4 APRIL 2026 | KICK OFF 3PM
EAST GRINSTEAD TOWN FC
The Vistavis Community Stadium College Lane | East Grinstead | RH19 3LS
Tel: 01342 325885
WELCOME TO EAST COURT
Happy Easter everyone and a warm welcome to our opponents this afternoon.
It looks as if Sittingbourne will have to settle for a play-off place this season and we wish them well in their endeavours.
Since the 2-2 draw against VCD we have had a couple of poor results. Losing to AFC Croydon Athletic was not a surprise but the extent of last Saturday's capitulation was.
The relegation battle is hotting up and whoever ends up in the bottom four will have an impact on the division we play in next season. Put it this way, if we want to stay in the 'Sussex' League at step 5 we could do with Hassocks staying up. Anyway, all that's to come. Good luck to the lads today and to all those making the trip to Jersey on Monday.
OWNERSHIP STATEMENT
In accordance with the Football Association's Rule 2.13 (publication of ownership) in relation to Step 1 to Step 6 Clubs within the National League System East Grinstead Town FC is an unincorporated association / members club and a Community Amateur Sports Club (reg no CASC 02270).
Followuson:
FROM THE Dugout
Welcome back to the Vistavis Community Stadium for this afternoon’s encounter against Sittingbourne. We would like to offer a warm welcome to their travelling supporters and officials.
Our last home game saw us defeated 3-0 by a very good Croydon Athletic side, however once again as we had shown in the previous game against VCD Athletic there were plenty of positives to take from our young team’s performance. That said, last time out away at Erith Town last Saturday was totally a totally unacceptable performance from the get-go. Unfortunately, our small and somewhat wounded squad caught up with us on this particular day.
Today sees us take on play-off challenging Sittingbourne who possess plenty of quality and will no doubt test the lads right across the park. It will be a tough contest and one where we will need to be disciplined off the ball.
On Monday we head over to play Jersey. This will be a new experience for a lot of the young players and no doubt they will be playing in front of a very big crowd. But in both of our Easter matches I expect hard work on and off the ball and commitment to how we want to approach each opponent. It’s been a tough season, but every game offers an opportunity for us all –players and management – to learn and improve. As always, your support is greatly appreciated.
Enjoy the game,
SITTINGBOURNE TheAwayEnd
The Brickies’ recent history
For the 2013-2014 season, Sittingbourne decided to leave their home of ten years and accept an invitation to move to Woodstock Park, a 14-acre area with superb social facilities.
Andy Spice, who almost single handed kept Sittingbourne as a senior club, stood down as Chairman making way forMaurice Dunk, a director of the company that holds the leasehold for Woodstock Park.
After a three-year reign as manager, Nick Davis and his assistant Tony Cornwell resigned in February 2018 after the committee decided a budget cut was necessary when it became clear that Sittingbourne would be unlikely to challenge for the play-offs. Coach Aslan Odev took over and then in January 2019 Dover Athletic Academy development manager Chris Lynch took the reins after a poor run.
After a disappointing end to the now expunged 2019-20 season Lynch resigned to be replaced by his Assistant Darren Blackburn.
Because of Covid restrictions Darren’s first full season was 2021-22 when the club had an early exit from both major cup competitions and finished in a midtable position in the league.
Nick Davis returned for season 2022/23 but unfortunately a run of 12 games without a win ended in Nick resigning in early January 2023 and the club brought in Ryan Maxwell to take his place. Almost immediately the results improved and Sittingbourne finished clear of the relegation places.
The 2023-2024 season, under Maxwell, was a great improvement with The Brickies finishing in third place. However, promotion was not to be as Three Bridges defeated them at Woodstock Park in the semi-finals of the play-offs.
The 2024-25 season was our most successful in recent years, reaching the quarter-final of the Isuzu FA Trophy was the highlight. We lost to Aldershot Town who went on to win the Trophy.
We beat seven clubs from higher divisons in the two major cup competitions. The highlight was the FA Trophy tie at National League side Southend United when the Brickies scored a last minute winner.
In the league a second-place finish, that saw a points total of 101 points and 117 goals scored, was not enough for promotion as Burgess Hill Town defeated the Brickies on penalties in the play-off final.
This season Sittingbourne lost a number of last season’s players – all to higher league sides. Ryan Maxwell, though, boosted his existing squad with a number of high quality signings.
Maxwell accepted an invitation to become manager of Isthmian Premier side Welling United and Reece Prestedge, Maxwell’s assistant, has taken over as manager.
The club became a limited company by guarantee in May 2018 and now has six directors
STANDINGS LEAGUE
FIXTURES & RESULTS
Sat 25 Apr H Margate
TEAM LINE UP
EAST GRINSTEAD TOWN F.C. SITTINGBOURNE
Harry Howes
Luke Leppard
Steve Smith ©
Curtis Gayler
Dan Perry
Tommy Seale
Tariq Richards
Omar Folkes
Tyler Grant
Leo Vowles
Harry Piper
Lewis McDonnell
Mason Saunders
Reegan Jeffery
Harry Bushell
Ethan Covus
Max Marshall
Jhon Murillo-Castillo
Declan Spittles
Josh Cryer
EAST GRINSTEAD TOWN HISTORY
PROGRAMMES FROM THE PAST BY LESTER MEDCALF
We’re going to have a look at a couple of programmes that we produced for games played in the past on more or less the same date as today’s game. We’ll start with East Grinstead v Arundel on Saturday 4 April 2009 in division one of the Sussex County League.
Team manager Steve Johnson welcomes our visitors and tells us that Arundel are having a good season. However they are a bit behind with their fixtures and might find it difficult to maintain their current form over the last few weeks. They had rather taken us apart when we had played the away match in late October - they had beaten us 6-0! Steve Johnson then has a few words about our 2-1 defeat on the previous Tuesday evening at home to Redhill when he was “at a bit of a loss to explain our first-half performance.”
The programme’s match report later tells us that Redhill had been 2-0 up at half-time, with their second goal coming on the stroke of half-time by Tony Reid (who would play for us a few years later). We were better in the second half but this was countered by an early missed penalty from Mannie Neville. Ben Burns did score halfway through the second half but our chances of snatching a point had not been helped by Dave Gellatly’s sending-off.
Richard Tramontin’s chairman notes then tell us something that really did surprise me - we were of course now in the last month of the season but we hadn’t won a home league match for over six months since the middle of September. And our six home matches so far in 2009 had all been lost with not even a draw.
The programme does have a look back at past games against Arundel - with many of them seeing lots of goals. For example season 2004/05 had seen us winning the away match 5-3 while the return match saw Arundel winning 4-1. And going back into the 1950s and 1960s we had had wins of 9-1, 6-2 and 7-3 with one score of 6-2 going in Arundel’s favour.
The programme’s league table shows us four places off the bottom (20 teams in the league) while Arundel are fifth. The game took some time to take off but a few minutes before half-time Arundel took the lead, though the scorer looked to be well offside when the ball was played to him. But deep into the second half we did manage to score through Simon Funnell. And 1-1 was how it ended for our first home point of the year.
Next up we have the programme for East Grinstead v South Park on Wednesday 5 April 2017 in the Isthmian League. I had a surprise when I read through the programme as Richard Tramontin’s notes referred to a future fixture to be played in October. There was also news of our first win in the year 2015, as well as news about our forthcoming November fireworks display. And there’s also an action photo of Greg Cundle who had not played for us for some while. Our next home programme apologises for “for some production problems” - whatever that meant.
Matt Longhurst’s team manager notes started with the good news that our previous Saturday’s 2-2 draw at home to Chatham meant that, with five games still to play, we now had enough points to avoid relegation. Later in the programme we have a brief match report (plus some action photos) of that Chatham match. The match had seen Marcus Elliott scoring two first-half goals - and so we were a little disappointed that we couldn’t hold on to that lead in the second half. Chatham had scored an early goal and then, a couple of minutes from the end, they converted a penalty which we thought had been given rather harshly.
A look at the programme’s 24 team league table shows six clubs beneath us with South Park in tenth place. We had played the away match at the end of September and had won 4-2. Here at East Court we had early goals from Daniel Hogan and Robin Dean in the first 10 minutes with Alex Gaggin adding a third goal later. But just before half-time a goalkeeping error allowed South Park to get back into the game. And a couple of early second-half goals for South Park then brought the score back to 3-3. But there was still time in the last few minutes for Alex Gaggin and Robin Dean to score again for us to win 5-3.
WASPS BEATEN BY PLAY-OFF CHASERS
A tough afternoon a fortnight ago against play-off chasing Croydon Athletic. Pics by Stuart Gibson show Jhon Murillo-Castillo and Omar Folkes testing Croydon's defence.
MATCH ACTION
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