The aspiration is that at the start of next season the whole of Cray Wanderers will be playing out of Flamingo Park, reveals CEO Sam Wright

CRAY WANDERERS chief executive officer Sam Wright has revealed that the club will be playing at their new stadium at Flamingo Park at the start of the 2024-25 season.

The club revealed tonight that work will begin on building their new stadium on the A20 Sidcup bypass next Monday 14 August.

The Wands have never owned their own stadium and have been groundsharing Bromley’s Hayes Lane ground since 1999 after their former base at Oxford Road, Sidcup failed ground grading criteria as it didn’t have planning permission to install floodlighting – a situation that is still present to this day.

“We’re just about to start the new season and this is news that everyone’s been waiting for, for a long, time, time – we’re coming home.  The Wands are coming home,” said Wright in a statement.

“We’re starting building on the stadium and it’s going to be up hopefully by the end of this year and that we’ll be starting doing some football down here, getting some of the development teams playing out of here.

“We’ll have the women’s first team playing out of here and then the aspiration is that at the start of next season the whole of Cray Wanderers will be playing out of Flamingo Park.

“A lot of people are probably thinking why has it taken so long? What’s been going on down here, because a lot of people were saying it was never going to happen.

“We’ll, we’ve had a lot of things outside of our control.  Unfortunately, the world has been a very, very strange place for a lot of people over the last few years’ and we’ve hit quite a few hurdles along the way.

“I want to five a special mention of the directors’. They have had complete and utter conviction to making this happen and every time we’ve hit a little hurdle, they’ve gone again and found another way to go and between them they’ve really worked hard to make this actually come to fruition.

“I know there was no one else more excited than our director team when we’ve finally got this done and dusted and we knew we would get it going.

“Obviously, a lot of our supporters’ are excited about the first team playing in our own stadium for the first time but there’s so much more to the football club than that.

“We have a genuine pathway and the delivery of the new stadium is just going to enhance what we’ve already doing.

“Neil Smith and Tim O’Shea (first team manager and his assistant) have come in like a breath of fresh air and they bring great energy.  They’ve got the Academy up and running and the lads’ in the Academy are going to have first-class facilities to train in and to do their education in and then outside of that we’ve got our women’s first team now, which creates a genuine pathway for the four girls’ teams that we have sitting underneath them and then the youth section is just getting bigger and bigger.

“We started here four or five seasons ago with about 12 youth teams playing all over the place. We’ve now got 32 youth teams playing on our own pitches at Flamingo Park and it will be in the shadow of the stadium going up.

“That growth doesn’t happen through one or two people. That growth happens through lots of supportive people working behind the scenes day in day out.

“This summer we’ve had unbelievable work going on up here with our supporters’ coming in here and creating a music venue and building a stage, re-designing the whole lay out of the hall.  You just can’t buy that, that commitment and that support so a massive thank you to all of those people who have been committed to the cause and have stayed here and stood shoulder and shoulder with us on the journey.

“The Wands are not wondering no more – we’re coming home, we’re finally coming home.”

Cray Wanderers kick-off their Isthmian League Premier Division campaign with a trip to Lewes tomorrow, while they kick-off their final campaign in exile when Horsham visit Hayes Lane next Wednesday 16 August (19:45).

Visit Cray Wanderers website: www.cray-wanderers.com