Dorking Wanderers – 12 Promotions in 23 Years

Just South of London, in between Guildford and Crawley, is a little market town called Dorking. There are many small towns like it all over the UK, you know the sort of place; around 17,000 people, a small town centre and high street, a local museum, a theatre, etc.

What most other small towns like Dorking don’t have though, is a local football club like Dorking Wanderers.

Dorking Wanderers was formed by friends in a park back in 1999, but 23 years later they were embarking on their first campaign in the National League, kicking off against Oldham Athletic, an ex Premier League side no less.

They have climbed the ranks of lower league football faster than any other club in history, winning 12 promotions in their first 23 years to go from the 16^th tier to the 5^th tier of English football – that’s an average of one promotion every 1.9 seasons.

This has brought Dorking a fair amount of attention in recent years, and that attention is only helping them to grow faster – more publicity brings more opportunities and a wider fan base.

The success of the club so far has been a massive group effort from scores of people who have come and gone over the years, but the one man who has been there every step of the way and who is undeniably the face of the club, is Marc White.

Who is Marc White?

Apart from being the UK’s youngest sales director at a blue chip company (at the time) and now the owner of his own online marketing company, Promote UK, Marc White is both the CEO and manager of Dorking Wanderers.

One of the original players on the team and the only manager they have ever had, he could never have imagined that a hobby he set up as a bit of a social occasion for the weekends would get so out of hand.

Despite working full time, Marc is in charge of everything on and off the pitch at Dorking Wanderers, dealing with player contracts, sponsorship, training, and obviously managing the games amongst many other things.

It’s no easy task for any club owner or manager, but the fact that he has done both, and essentially managed to turn a Sunday League team into a semi-professional football club in his spare time is astounding.

He clearly has a head for business and a talent for coaching the best out of his players, and the leadership qualities he attained while working in the city have obviously stood him in good stead in the dressing room – no one could call Dorking’s rapid rise to the fifth tier of English football a fluke.

White’s management style is passionate and loud on the pitch, honest and direct in the dressing room, and he isn’t phased by the cameras either. A YouTube channel documents the club’s efforts each week with eye opening access to behind the scenes conversations, tactical discussions, and tellings off when they are needed too.

Marc dedicates the majority of his time and money to Dorking Wanderers, and although all of the players are getting paid something these days, it’s a labour of love for Marc, who still doesn’t take a salary.

He remember watching his first ever game of football with his grandad, at the very ground his own club now call home, and he wants to create those same memorable moments for others.

Real Life Championship Manager

Dorking Wanderers’ story is, as Marc White has described, like a real life version of Championship Manager.

He quite literally created a football club from nothing, and took it all the way to the National League, the 5^th tier of English football and one promotion away from the EFL. All the way from renting a council owned field to playing at a £7 million purpose built ground.

He has been helped by a small army of volunteers along the way, and even though there are now paid staff roles at the club their reliance on the goodwill of supporters is still strong.

People have given up their time to run hospitality, wash the kit, make the tea, just about everything. Even the players have had to pitch in, on one occasion parking their cars in a line at night and turning on the headlights so that cement pathways could be laid along the sides of the pitch.

So while great football work was being done from one game to the next, even more work was going on behind the scenes and in the pre-season and everyone was pitching in.

Good coaching and a few savvy signings have allowed the club to win points and gain consecutive promotions, which have in turn made it easier to attract better young players who were perhaps struggling to find first team football in higher leagues.

As an example of just how much things have changed for the Wanderers; one of their early games was abandoned because a Shetland pony wandered onto the pitch from a neighbouring traveller site and the children wouldn’t leave it alone, so the ref called it off. Now they regularly attract 1,000+ supporters to each game, sell tickets that cost £16 a time, and are broadcast live on TV.

Despite all this, as of 2022 Dorking have only ever paid one transfer fee; £15k for Jason Prior. All their other signings have been on free transfers. That said, Prior worked out so well that when he left the club at the age of 33, White said he would have happily paid 3 times that amount had he known what the future held. Prior became a prolific goal scorer for Dorking, netting 68 times in 120 games – a goals to games strike rate of 56.6%.

Dorking’s underdog story has captured the imaginations of football fans all over the country, but they are not the only National League side to be getting attention from the media. In fact, Wrexham are getting substantially more of the spotlight thanks to their takeover by Hollywood pairing Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, and the accompanying documentary, ‘Welcome to Wrexham’.

The two clubs are worlds apart financially though. While Wrexham were reportedly paying star player Paul Mullin £4,500 per week, many of Dorking’s lads were still working regular jobs and using their football wage to supplement their income, despite playing in the same league.

League Progression and Promotions

Starting in what is often called ‘park football’, there is literally no lower level of the organised game than where Dorking Wanderers began. The step below that is a kick around in your back garden.

At their starting point, it was literally a case of jumpers for goalposts.

There first move, from the Crawley and District to the West Sussex Football League was across rather than up, but from that point onwards they gained promotion almost every year for 6 years or so, until they hit the Sussex County League.

Now known as the Southern Combination League, their promotion to Division 3 put them at Level 11 and Step 7 of the National League System.

This was arguably one of their most important promotions because it put them on the map, so to speak, and although they certainly noticed the difference in the quality of the opposition, putting the brakes on their promotion circus for a few years, they soon found their feet.

• 1999 – Division 5 Crawley and District Football League
• 2000 – West Sussex Football League Division 4
• 2001 – West Sussex Football League Division 3
• 2002 – West Sussex Football League Division 2
• 2004 – West Sussex Football League Division 1
• 2006 – West Sussex Football League Premiership
• 2007 – Sussex County League Division 3
• 2011 – Sussex County League Division 2
• 2012 – Sussex County League Division 1
• 2015 – Isthmian League Division 1 South
• 2017 – Isthmian League Premier Division
• 2019 – National League South
• 2022 – National League

The club spent more time in the Sussex County League than any other, but once they made the move up to Level 8 and Step 4 of the Football pyramid, they were back to their league hopping best.

Dorking Wanderers have the most promotions in British football history, eventually reaching the National League which made them a Level 5, Step 1 club – the next step for them, is becoming a full time professional club in Division 2 of the EFL.

Stadium History

One of the things about being promoted through the various levels of English football so quickly, is that your stadium – which is perhaps too grand a word for the pitches Dorking used to play on – must meet certain standards.

The rules around this change from one league to the next, so promotion in these lower leagues where there is very little money floating about actually comes with substantial financial challenges.

Dorking have managed to navigate this through a mixture of shrewd business moves and a bit of elbow grease from all involved – especially in the early days.

They have played at 3 different grounds so far, as you can see in the table below, with more information on each ground following underneath.

The Big Field, Brockham – 1999-2007

The Wanderers’ first ground was situated in Brockham, just east of Dorking, and was council owned, costing £50 to rent per game. This meant that each member of the team would have to put in a fiver for the privilege of playing.

The nets for the goals were kept in a club house 200 meters away, so the lads used to have to arrive in time to drag them out and hang them up, a job no one really liked – cue players turning up deliberately late, or hiding around the corner to avoid being given the job.

This would be their home right the way up to 2007, when their promotion to the Sussex County League Division 3 forced the club to find a new home.

Since Big Field (what a name) was council owned, the Wanderers were not allowed to make any changes to it due to tight restrictions, but to play in their new league there were certain stipulations, one of which being that the pitch had to be at the very least roped off.

With no choice but to move on, the Dorking team began to scout the local area for other options.

Westhumble – 2007-2018

For many, Westhumble is still the spiritual home of Dorking Wanderers, as it was the first place they could really call their own.

A little North of Dorking, Westhumble is also where the Wanderers became a semi-professional team and really began to run the club with proper structure.

What would become their first real ground was initially little more than an overgrown field with no access to electricity or running water, a site that had been passed up by countless other ventures in the past, but one that Marc White thought he could make work.

It took him, his players, and their families a lot of work pulling down rotten sheds, building wooden huts to act as dressing rooms, and plenty more besides to get the place into shape. Not to mention the money raised and spent getting basic utilities installed.

Dorking enjoyed some fantastic successes at Westhumble, but once again they eventually outgrew the place.

Their promotion run meant that, despite constant improvements and additions such as floodlights, Westhumble was no longer suitable for the level of football they would be playing, so with a heavy heart, the club was once again on the hunt for a new home.

Meadowbank Park – 2018 – Present

Another club’s misfortune actually turned out to be a stroke of very well timed good luck for Dorking Wanderers.

Local rivals, Dorking F.C, had folded and gone into administration, leaving their ground, Meadowbank, vacant.

What’s more, it had been at various stages of redevelopment over the previous few years so a lot of the preliminary work to bring it up to scratch such as planning and ground clearance had already been done.

In 2018, Dorking Wanderers jumped at the chance to lease the £7 million venue, and after some expensive redevelopments they had themselves their first real football ground that was more than a well maintained pitch and the odd temporary structure.

Meadowbank uses an artificial 3G pitch as it is heavily used by several teams, the ground has its’ own bar and lounge, covered seating, proper dressing rooms for the home and away teams, excellent facilities for the level of the club, and is also home to the Surrey FA offices.

It is also slap bang in the centre of town with parking facilities nearby, making it much more easily accessible to fans than the previous two grounds.

The move to Meadowbank also allowed Marc White to turn the club into the community venue he always wanted it to be. A soft play centre, coffee shop, and hireable function rooms mean it has multiple uses and benefits to the community, and the pitch can be hired too for youth games and the like.

In 2022, Dorking Wanderers put in an offer to buy the freehold of the council owned stadium, showing just how far they have come, and just how well they had settled in.

Connection with Wimbledon

In a funny sort of way, if it wasn’t for Wimbledon F.C going down the pan there might not be a Dorking Wanderers at all.

Owner/Manager Marc White was a Wombles fan, attending home and away games each weekend, but around 1999 the club started to run into trouble both on and off the pitch.

White and his friends weren’t really enjoying themselves watching their team play anymore, and that was one of the reasons they decided to form Dorking Wanderers and start playing themselves instead.

A few years later and Wimbledon F.C had ceased to exist, going into administration and relocating to Milton Keynes to become the MK Dons. Angry supporters refused to acknowledge the Dons as their club, however, and formed their own club back at the original location, AFC Wimbledon.

What is most interesting here though, is that while MK Dons could continue where Wimbledon F.C left off (as they were technically the same club under a different name), AFC Wimbledon had to start right back at the bottom. Not quite as far down as Dorking Wanderers, but considering fans were attending Premier League matches just a few years earlier, it must have been a shock for them to be visiting grounds in the 9^th tier of English football.

AFC Wimbledon climbed from the Combined Counties League, through the Isthmian League and the Conference (as the National League was then known), and eventually into Division 2 then Division 1 of the EFL.

At the time, they were the only club formed in the 21^st century to have made it to the Football League.

You might notice a striking similarity between AFC Wimbledon’s journey and Dorking Wanderers’ here.

Both clubs were formed as a direct consequence of the downfall of another, and both have battled through the lower leagues to make it to the Football League, both breaking records along the way.

Connection with Dorking F.C

Dorking Wanderers have also been the beneficiaries of the downfall of another club, in a roundabout way.

Not to be confused with the Wanderers, Dorking F.C were established way back in 1880, and spent their life playing in the lower tiers of English football, although they did once make it to the first round of the FA Cup.

Being long established though, they had a ground and a set of supporters, which were two things that Dorking Wanderers didn’t have at the start.

Dorking F.C started to get into trouble in the 2010s though, with a ground that wasn’t fit for purpose anymore, and money troubles to boot.

Having previously worked alongside Dorking Wanderers to support each other, Dorking FC entered into a ground sharing arrangement with them at Westhumble in 2016, awaiting the completion of their own new stadium at Meadowbank.

If you have read this article in full then you will already know that Meadowbank is now the home of Dorking Wanderers.

That is because, despite everyone’s best efforts, Dorking F.C folded in 2017, allowing the Wanderers to snap up what would have been their new ground in 2018, and probably some of their old supporters too.

A Bunch of Amateurs

Although the A Bunch of Amateurs Youtube channel is not an official part of the club (who have their own channel), they have been following Dorking’s progress for 3 years now, releasing videos each week reporting on what has been going on behind the scenes and in each game.

Just be aware there is some ‘colourful and passionate’ language in these videos!

This has helped to boost Dorking Wanderers’ profile and given them another platform to gain fans and open up new opportunities, like sponsorship for example.

Not to mention the impact it might have on future potential signings – who would you rather play for, the team with an amazing backstory that everyone is talking about online, or Tooting? No offence to the people of Tooting there, your market is wonderful that lido is amazing in the summer.

The channel had 50,000 subscribers in 2022, with 5.6 million total views, and the comments section shows support from all over the world.

It is run by a YouTuber and videographer named Rich Phippen, who got wind of Dorking’s story in 2019 from his barber of all people, and went to visit Marc to pitch his idea.

It’s been a huge success for both Rich and Dorking Wanderers, and the videos are incredibly insightful, well shot and edited.