THE TEAM AT THE BOTTOM OF MY GARDEN

YOU can find some interesting things at the bottom of your garden.

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GARRY WHITE EXPLAINS HOW UNHERALDED SEVENDAKS TOWN FC HAVE REIGNITED HIS PASSION FOR FOOTBALL

In my case, a football team.

If you open my back gate and walk less than 200 metres in a straight line, you immediately find yourself at the unprepossessing place. Usain Bolt could run it in 20 seconds whereas I prefer to walk it in a stately two minutes.

If I stand at my bedroom window, I can see across the small park at the back of my house all the way into the Bourne Stadium that serves as the home of Sevenoaks Town FC.

There is a better-than-average chance that you have never heard of them. Isthmian South East football - the fourth tier of Non-League and eighth overall of English football - doesn't generally demand the same level of attention as the beatified Premier League or 'The Prem' as too many people insist on calling it.

For a long time, I was oblivious like you. Moving to the area nearly 20 years ago, I used to absentmindedly cast an eye over the latest match report in the local paper. And, from what I remember, Sevenoaks seemed to lose most weeks and languish regularly towards the bottom of the Kent County League. That was as far as my interest went.

Only when I moved to my current home in the dying winter embers of 2020 did things begin to change, but, even then, it was more of a gradual nature.

I remember Paul Whitehouse in his role as Ron Manager, whose usual schtick was to mix utter nonsense with a form of unhinged nostalgia, once hit the mark with such genuine pathos that it almost moved me to tears.

Sat in an empty ground, he reels off a list of teams, "Marvellous, isn't it?", before entering a rose-tinted and no doubt outdated view of the world which included Cheesy Peas at halftime, dad knocking back a cheeky post-match pint and, of course, mum at home cooking the tea; before making us all misty-eyed with his conclusion: "Saturday afternoon is for football."