Andrew Warshaw speaks to club vice-chairman Paul Millington about the success of recent stadium upgrades

The new 400-seat north stand at The Dave Bryant Stadium

Enfield Town’s pre-season programme of friendlies kicks off this month with a rather special occasion.

The visit of fellow fan-owned club AFC Wimbledon on Wednesday, 9^th July not only gives the bolstered squad a chance to test their mettle against a team promoted to League One at the end of last season but coincides with the official opening of Town’s brand new 400-seater stand.

Taking capacity of the ground over 3,000 the stand, sponsored by local Enfield business Granite Direct, was used for the first time during the final game of last season – but the Wimbledon fixture has been designated as its formal inauguration.

No-one will be more proud to celebrate the stand’s completion than Town vice-chairman Paul Millington, who drove the project and spent the best part of a year getting the stand off the ground, so to speak, in order to comply with National League South capacity requirements.

“The effort from everyone over the last year has been immense,” Paul told the Dispatch. “It looks so impressive and shows what can be done. It’s a huge step forward.”

While home fans primarily will use the stand, away supporters are welcome to sit there too. “We don’t envisage having too much segregation during the season so it will be open to anyone,” said Paul.

Both the leader of Enfield Council Ergin Erbil and the borough’s new mayor Margaret Greer have been invited to participate in a pre-match ceremony on what promises to be another of special evening at The Dave Bryant Stadium.

As far as funding is concerned, Paul explained that the cost of the entire ground improvement scheme, which also included new turnstiles, was approximately £140,000. Of that amount, £90,000 came from the Football Foundation charity, £40,000 from a fans’ crowdfunding initiative, and the rest from existing club coffers.

Without such a huge contribution from supporters, the club would have had to dig even deeper into its own resources to complete the necessary work by the end-of-March deadline for compliance with league rules.

The new turnstiles at The Dave Bryant Stadium

Paul continued: “We initially targeted around £35,000 from the crowdfunding, but I thought personally that we might not exceed £30,000, so to surpass both figures shows the power of a supporter-owned club.

“We are also grateful to the professionals we employed to get us over the line and to the council who understood the urgency. But that’s not to say there weren’t pitfalls along the way.”

Asked what some of the difficulties were, Paul said: “One of the issues that knocked us back just before Christmas was the requirement to do both a full transport survey and an acoustic survey because of the increase in capacity. We knew there would have to be some kind of survey but were not expecting the need to do a full transport one and had to get it done at very short notice.”

Having achieved the club’s goal of surviving in the division last season, the off-pitch progress means Town are now fully compliant with step two league requirements regarding stadium facilities. But even if the Towners had been relegated, says Paul, the new stand would not have been wasted.

“I never saw it like that, because had we got promoted again, we would not have had to worry about ground improvements. Plus, you always want to upgrade facilities if possible.”

If you think the new stand and two new turnstiles are the end of the planned projects, however, think again. The club remains eligible to receive £250,000 in total from the Football Foundation for stadium upgrades, so there is still a large chunk of money left over. “That was one of benefits of staying up,” Paul explained. “We want to make the most of it, and having used £90,000, we still have £160,000 to spend.”

The plan now is to earmark that money for a new bar, clubhouse and function room.

“Butler’s Bar is an iconic building but we recognise, especially having visited other step two clubs, that it isn’t adequate for large crowds.

“We need a new facility. Hopefully we can get something in place within two years.”

To buy advance tickets for the AFC Wimbledon game on Wednesday (9th):
Visit enfieldtownfc.ktckts.com/event/ent2526ps1/enfield-town-v-afc-wimbledon

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