I’ve always said The FA Cup First Round is the Holy Grail and we’ve managed to get there after 166 years, so it’s a massive achievement for the club, says Cray Wanderers chairman Gary Hillman

CRAY WANDERERS chairman Gary Hillman says Flamingo Park is ready to stage the club’s biggest ever game in their 166-year history on Sunday.

Tim O’Shea’s side host League One highflyers Stockport County in The FA Cup First Round, the very first time the club has reached this stage of the competition.

The game will be televised on BBC2 and TNT Sports, which will bank the part-time Isthmian League Premier Division outfit a broadcast fee of £50,000.  The winners on Sunday will receive £47,750 and the losers will receive £15,800.

Cray Wanderers have already scooped £20,625 in prize money by beating Lewes, Maidstone United, Chippenham Town and Bedford Town in qualifying.

Mr Hillman was reduced to tears of happiness after THAT memorable replay success over National League North side Bedford Town and says everything is in place for Sunday’s tie.

“It’s ironic, we’ve got Mark Stimson as assistant manager. He was the first one to knock us out of the Fourth Qualifying Round when he was at Grays Athletic many moons ago (2005),” said Mr Hillman.

“I don’t think you know but Michael Paye scored 40 years ago for Cray on Sunday, so that’s a good anniversary and a good omen.

“The main thing first, let’s have a good account of ourselves on and off the pitch really, so that’s number one priority and then see what happens from there really.

“I never thought, normally you try to attract people in. At the moment you’re trying to keep them out. It’s amazing, 2,500 capacity, sold out in 10 minutes, so the whole community’s coming in.

“Hopefully Flamingo Park is going to look good on tv. We put the new stand in down the back there, which will hopefully keep a bit of atmosphere in and looks a bit better as well.

“It was the Holy Grail getting to the First Round but it’s the double Holy Grail getting into the Second Round and triple Holy Grail getting into the Third Round – let’s give a good account of ourselves and see how we go.”

Standing in their way are Stockport County. A side in second-place in League One, three points behind leaders Huddersfield Town and 111 places ahead of O’Shea’s men.

Former landlords Bromley, currently bottom of League One, went down to a 1-0 defeat up to Edgeley Park on 17 October and AFC Wimbledon also lost their last weekend by two-goals-to-one.

“I’ve spoken to people at Bromley and I spoke to Ivor Heller at Wimbledon and they’ve just said ‘they’re the best team in the league by far!’ – so they’re due an off day,” added Mr Hillman.

“I’ve seen so many FA Cup upsets though. I was standing on the terrace at Macclesfield last year when Macclesfield fully deserve to beat the FA Cup winners (Premier League side Crystal Palace). You never know…

“I think we’ve always had a good team spirit and I’ve always said it’s not about – at any level of football – if you have 11 superstars and 11 egos, it doesn’t work.  You’ve seen so may good teams in the Premier League and other Leagues, who have got all these good players and get relegated.

“But we’ve always been, at Cray, real die-hard players, superstars but work as a team.  Like I said to Tosh, I think it’s one of the best teams in my 32 years as chairman.

“Look at the teams we beat in Maidstone, top of National South, Chippenham, Bedford, all in the higher league and even when we played Lewes, they were higher in our league and we’ve deserved to win all those games as well.  No one can say we didn’t deserve to win those games and even the Maidstone and the Bedford games, we could’ve beaten them the first-time round.”

When asked why he puts so much time, effort, blood sweat the tears and money into his beloved Cray Wanderers, Mr Hillman replied, “Don’t know really. It’s like a family isn’t it? It just becomes part of your everyday sort of family life really.

“Now we’ve got the stadium done, I’m much more at ease and content that if anything did happen to me, the club would survive.

“It’s very pleasing and you do it for days like Sunday basically. That’s why you do it. You do it for days like Sunday, Bedford and Maidstone in the earlier rounds.

“You can’t beat that feeling when you have a massive result and go to a much bigger team, much bigger budgets and stuff like that and Cray Wanderers have always been like that. We’ve always been a bit of an underdog and grinding out results and people thinking ‘how did they do that?!’

“It puts us on the worldwide stage, BBC and all the tv networks, so we’ll get exposure all around the world, which is massive for us, the Oldest Football Club in London.

“I’ve always said, you can buy football clubs but you can’t buy history and we’ve got the history.

“The FA Cup is a competition for real football fans basically. The Premier League and the Champions League is all a bit glamourised. It’s brilliant football and stuff but for the communities and for real football people, it is the main competition and you’ve always got that dream.

“I’ve always said the First Round is the Holy Grail and we’ve managed to get there after 166 years, so it’s a massive achievement for the club, thanks to the management team.

“We’ve played some brilliant football this season and we’ve got, I would say, one of the best teams Cray have had out there, when you see some of these performances.

“I think the finances are very, very welcome but you can’t buy history and you can’t buy the exposure that we’re going to get.  Everyone sees the ground, hopefully we come across well on the tv and then hopefully bring back some of the community to see us (play Three Bridges at home in the League next Tuesday).

“Our support has gone up from sort of 150-200s when we were groundsharing at Bromley to 700-800. It really sort of makes a difference to put a team out on the pitch and compete and we want to push up to the next level.

“The Isthmian League Premier is an extremely hard league to get out of it with one team winning it and one team going up through the play-offs. We’re very well equipped at this moment in time.”

Vice-chairman Michael Paye, meanwhile, wants the team to show their best side when they come up against Jimmy McNulty’s full-time pros.

“I’m feeling excitement. A little bit of worry obviously because there’s 111 places between the two clubs, so I want the boys to enjoy it,” said Paye.

“We went into the changing room after the game on Saturday (4-1 league win at Brentwood Town) and I said to them ‘right now, the league games are out of the way, just this week, enjoy yourself, really enjoy yourself, just enjoy it, embrace it.'

“Saying that we want them to really give a good account of themselves, whether we lose, whether we win, whether we draw, or whatever, which would be fantastic but just to give a good account of yourself, make yourself proud, make us proud but also make yourselves and your families proud.”

The television cameras are there for one thing – they want Cray Wanderers to produce an upset and O’Shea has the players that can deliver on this stage.

“Well, I was actually talking to them (the television crews) and I said it would be nice to get the bigger crowd and go to Stockport and they went ‘well, you wouldn’t be on the tele, we want the upset’ - and we want that as well, so let’s hope that happens.”

A 3G pitch, a bitter wind blowing off the adjacent A20. A small windowless visitors’ dressing room, with tenants AFC Whyteleafe’s badge on the dressing room floor.  A compact crowd of 2,500 close to the action. Part-time players playing with heart and desire. This, Stockport County, is proper football.

O’Shea’s heroes have gone to replays in three previous games but it has to be settled on the day with extra time and more penalty drama possible.

Cray Wanderers have won all four of their FA Cup penalty shoot-outs in qualifying over the years.

“That’s a good omen,” said Paye, a former player and manager of the club.

“I think for the lower teams it’s probably for the better because there’s many a time that you’ve seen clubs that they draw and then Man United get them back to Old Trafford and then they beat them (quite comfortably) in the replay, so it’s all on the day.

“It’s whether they fancy it. It’s whether they want to come down here, it’s quite a way from Stockport. They’ve got to come down here and play on our pitch with our crowd, you never know, you never know.

“Tosh has done an amazing job. The way that he plays football, the way he sets them up. The way the boys respect him and Mark Stimson and Alfie George and Roy Brooke, of course.  There’s so much respect for them because they’ve played at such a high level and even the way Tosh handles the interviews and stuff, he’s class. He’s class and he’s been really good for the club and we are where we are.”

When asked whether this was a career highlight, Paye recalled the day when he made his Charlton Athletic debut against bitter-rivals Crystal Palace during the 1983-84 season.

“Career highlight? For me it has to be when I made my debut for Charlton Athletic, that was my career highlight.

“By the way that was in a Palace shirt! When I made my debut, when I was 17. We played Palace away and Charlton brought the wrong kit and we had to borrow a kit from Palace, so I made my Charlton debut in a Palace shirt!

“It was surreal because there was 25,000 people there and for me it wasn’t such a big thing (playing in their kit). I got told 20 minutes before the game that I was playing, so as far as I was concerned, the kit was irrelevant. I was making my debut for Charlton.”

Cray Wanderers will have their names on the backs of their shirts for the very first time to mark the occasion.

They were in negotiations with Three Bridges last night about wearing their away burgunday strip for Tuesday’s League game.  Three Bridges also wear amber and black.

Let’s hope the Wands kit will be covered in champagne following the post-match dressing room celebrations on Sunday afternoon.  There will be a cameras inside both dressing rooms too.

111 places. Stockport County losing only two of their last 10 games. Scrubb that. This is The FA Cup after all. The Magic of The Cup and all that.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It’s eleven-v-eleven. Anything can happen. There’s always one non-league team that pulls off a giant-killing act.

As David Bowie said, ‘we can be heroes, just for one day’, well let’s make that eight days!

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

Cray Wanderers  v  Stockport County
The Emirates FA Cup First Round
Sunday 8 November 2026
Kick Off 2:15pm
at Flamingo Park, Sidcup by-pass, Chislehurst, Kent BR7 6HL