Margate F.C.

Margate
Margate FC badge
Full nameMargate Football Club
Nickname(s)The Gate
Founded1896; 128 years ago (1896)
GroundHartsdown Park
Capacity2,100 (400 seated)[1]
ChairmanRicky Owen
ManagerBen Greenhalgh (player manager)
LeagueIsthmian League South East Division
2023–24Isthmian League Premier Division, 19th of 22 (relegated)
WebsiteClub website

Margate Football Club, originally called Margate Town, is an English football club based in the seaside resort of Margate, Kent. The club's first team play in the Isthmian League South East Division. The club was known during the 1980s as Thanet United.

The club was founded in 1896 and joined the Southern Football League in 1933.[2] After a spell in the Kent League after World War II the team returned to the Southern League in 1959 and remained there until 2001 when they gained promotion to the Football Conference, the highest level of English non-League football. Their stay at this level saw the team forced to groundshare with other clubs due to drawn-out and problematic redevelopment work at their Hartsdown Park stadium. The stadium has been the home of Margate FC since 1929, the same year the park itself opened to the public, and during the three years spent away from their own ground, they were expelled from the Conference National and subsequently relegated to the Isthmian League.

The team, nicknamed "The Gate",[3] have to date reached the third round proper of England's premier cup competition, the FA Cup, on two occasions. On the second of these occasions they played Tottenham Hotspur, a First Division team and the reigning UEFA Cup holders.

  1. ^ Chris Evans and Rob Craven (13 April 2007). "Revenge on the Cards as Margate Pay a Visit (13th April 2007)". Cheltenham City F.C. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 29 May 2007.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference fchd was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Redsull, Kevin (17 December 2013). "Margate Football Club appoint former Hayes, Aldershot and AFC Wimbledon manager Terry Brown as their new boss". Kent Online. Archived from the original on 5 May 2016. Retrieved 17 April 2016.