Road To Wembley Part 5: Marske Desperate For Cup Run After Vandals Leave Huge Bill

The Sportsman's Road to Wembley has taken us up to Marske United and after their win over Whitby Town in the second qualifying round, they face South Shields in the third qualifying round. But the tie has now taken on even more importance, as The Sportsman found out.

There was set to be a top of the table clash with South Shields ahead of the two sides meeting in the FA Cup this weekend. Instead, as hundreds of fans flooded into the stadium with anticipation, Marske United had to deliver the blunt news that the match was to be called off. As they prepared to switch on the floodlights, something they are trying to do later and later due to the rising cost of electricity, they found that some of their pylons had been damaged by vandals.

Saturday's FA Cup tie with South Shields is away from home so will go ahead, but Marske now face a race against time to get their next game on, which is just four days away. A GoFundMe page has been launched to try to raise funds for the repairs and stadium improvements, which has now generated an impressive £3,500 of the £20,000 target.

READ MORE:

Marske United secretary Mark Hathaway said: “Everyone at the club is bitterly disappointed that a member of the local community could cause this damage, which led to the postponement of one of the club’s biggest league games of the season, with a crowd nearing 1,000 expected.

“We now face a race against time to fix the floodlights in time for our next game on Tuesday, October 4, as well as a huge bill for the repairs. As the club has progressed quickly through the non-league system over the last few years, there is already a large amount of work that needs to be completed to get the ground up to the required standard. The damage has set our plans back significantly.”

This is a seventh-tier club that can only afford to pay its playing and coaching staff. Everybody else involved in the running of the club, including social media manager Kieran Crossman is a volunteer.

“I don’t even work in social media, I work in finance,” he told The Sportsman on our recent visit, before the vandalism took place. “But as I say it is enjoyable, it is giving something back because obviously the players do it on the pitch for us but there is a team of volunteers who give stuff back.

“I got into it because one season they put a tweet out asking for volunteers, doing match reports and ad-hoc tasks but this season we’ve been promoted to step three, or tier seven, they were looking to expand it a bit and make it a bit more professional. So I work alongside a team of people and we all muck in where it is needed.”

Having been a Middlesbrough season-ticket holder before the pandemic, Kieran found himself going to more and more Marske games, and now he travels near and far, working with the club.

“I think at all non-league teams realistically it's a family feel to the club that you don’t get at professional teams. Sometimes at professional teams you feel a bit of a number, whereas here we all know each other, and even now we are getting bigger crowds you still see people that you know regularly.

“We’d love an FA Cup run despite the extra work it would bring because the FA Cup is one of the most prestigious competitions in world football and everyone knows the FA Cup and the history behind it. To be frank, the monetary reward is massive for a club like us, a club that is self-sufficient and doesn't have a rich benefactor. Last season, if you got on BBC in the first round it was an extra £50k into the coffers which would be massive.”

This FA Cup tie has just taken on extra importance for Marske United. The community-owned club are desperate to keep this run going in order to upgrade their stadium, and finance the repairs. It’s just another example of the challenges clubs at this level face.

The Sportsman will return for the next episode, the final qualifying round, of our Road to Wembley series with either Marske United or South Shields.