This feature is part of MUNDIAL’s ongoing series with the Premier League Stadium Fund and the Premier League, FA and Government’s Football Foundation. You can read the first piece, on the mighty Wythenshawe Football Club, right here.

Port towns are always interesting places. Places of growth and change, hubs of trade and action, overrunning with people and stories, teeming with life. They’re places on the edge of things, the seas opening up opportunities that would never have been possible otherwise.

Margate is very much alive to those opportunities. A member of the historic 15th century Cinque Ports confederation and the host of the final battle of the second phase of the Hundred Years War, the allure of the North Sea transformed Margate from coastal hub to seaside resort for holidaymakers in the 18th century. Up sprang Dreamland, and suddenly Margate became somewhere to get away from it all, abandon your everyday lives, become slightly different, even for a short time.

“I think it's quite interesting to play for a football club that has a bit of edginess to it,” Ben Greenhalgh, player-manager of Margate FC, tells me over a steaming mug of tea. “For sure. Take the fact that The Libertines sponsor our shirt, for example. We sell a lot of shirts sure but for Pete Doherty, it wasn’t just slapping a name on the kit. The band cares about what happens to the club. They look out for results, wear the shirts on stage, and last year Pete came into the changing room and spoke about not only myself as manager but how we turned things around and how we needed to keep doing more, push on into the playoffs and go up the leagues.”

It’s a progression that’s been given a turbocharge by the Premier League Stadium Fund and The Football Foundation, charity of the Premier League, The FA and Government. In 2021, the Premier League Stadium Fund provided £150,000 of investment into new changing rooms, then three years later Margate Football Club received £194,000 from The Football Foundation to redevelop their small-sided 5-a-side pitches, and an extra £61,000 for pitch maintenance at Hartsdown Academy, home of Margate youth. Creating ladders for the next generation to climb. 

On Friday mornings we drive around, pick up all the homeless people in a mini bus, bring them in, they get to use the changing rooms, they can shower, shave, Frankie the kit man does an extra shift and washes all their clothes.

For all the talks of progression and advancement, Ben is something of a throwback himself. When you think of Player-Managers, who do you see? Ruud Gullit, sweeping forth for Chelsea? Bryan Robson, in shorts and suit-tie at his Middlesbrough unveiling? Maybe even Vincent Kompany lining up in the purple of Anderlecht in 2019? After watching Margate take on Crowborough Athletic, I will be adding Ben Greenhalgh’s twinkling, dancing Nike Mercurials to my mind’s rolodex of playing gaffers. 

Ben’s time at Margate has been a wonderful coda to a rich, varied, and itinerant career. Winner of Sky One reality show Football’s Next Star, Ben was given a contract at Inter Milan that eventually landed him a UEFA Champions League medal after being part of José Mourinho’s travelling squad for the final. Spells across the football pyramid, from Maidstone United to Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Tonbridge Angels followed. But it’s at Margate that Ben has really found a place to shine.

”Margate has been a brilliant club for me.  I've pretty much done everything with them and even with the player manager thing, they supported me because they knew I was the best person for the job.  As a player, I was there when we've won cup finals and we've lost cup finals, when we were relegated and when we’ve gotten to the playoffs. They knew I’d experienced it all and could be trusted to take the club further.

“I think in terms of my management style, I learnt a lot from Terry Butcher at Inverness, who was a supreme motivator, and from Mr Mourinho, what I learnt most was respect. He was the man in world football at the time and the respect he generated among the squad was such that everyone would do anything for him. The players were in awe of him and everything he was saying was like gold dust. He was very relaxed during training sessions and they wanted to work hard for him, and that really, is why they won the Champions League.

“On that, getting a Champions League winners medal was crazy. UEFA had made 24  Champions League medals and there were 20 players in the final matchday squad. But there were a few of us extra at the ground and I got given the medal. It became a thing where obviously I was a little bit young and naive, and didn't really see that as my Champions League medal.

“But later in my life, I started playing golf seriously and went professional in 2015, and my way of getting into my opponent’s heads was going ‘Oh I'm actually a footballer’ and then marking my ball with the Champions League medal! Just to gain that extra edge over them psychologically.”

Ben nips off for his pre-match team talk and we head to those new fangled five-a-side pitches, gleaming in the late winter sun, to talk to Deny Wilson. Deny is general manager of Margate FC, a man with a big grin and an even bigger zeal for his football club, and the community that surrounds it.

“You know, at this level, even things like having a nice changing room make such a difference. We received £150,000 from the Premier League Stadium Fund in 2021 for the changing rooms, the external path, and the retractable tunnel, and it’s had an immense impact.  With our old changing rooms, people would not sign for us. We literally had a hole in the floor next to the toilet. Even when you get down to the youth level, kids would turn up on a Saturday and there was no heating, it was horrible. But now they can get ready in a place that really looks the business. 

“So that’s great for us professionally, but, with my other hat on, I’m the director of the charity here as well. And our homeless project is probably the thing people know us for nationally.  So on Friday mornings we drive around, pick up all the homeless people in a mini bus, bring them in, they get to use the changing rooms, they can shower, shave, Frankie the kit man does an extra shift and washes all their clothes. 

“So when they leave here, they've had a shower and a wash. All their clothes are clean. We also do two meals, a breakfast and a hot meal. It's been so popular that TDC, the Tendring District Council, have partnered with us now. They send their entire homeless division down here every week.

“We have mobile dentists, mobile doctors. If you need a birth certificate, as some of these homeless people have no proof they exist, you can get all that here on a Friday now as well.”

A frankly astounding initiative, and one that reminds me of football’s real unifying power. It’s one example among many of how clubs at this level use funding from the Premier League to positively impact their communities – in the most remarkable of ways.

And soon conversation turns, inescapably, to The Libertines again. And the story behind Margate’s eye-catching strips.

“I’d seen on social media that The Libertines had bought a hotel in the area. So I kept going down for a couple of days knocking on the door until someone finally answered, a young guy, confused, and it was Dean Fragile. He opens the door and gives me contact for Pete’s manager. I made a proposal, and he liked it.

“I remember I was sitting at home on Friday night, getting a phone call. Pete’s manager said, ‘I presented your idea to the boys, they all love it. Pete's a mad football fan anyway. They want to do it.’ So I send them over the shirt designs and they sign on the dotted line.

“They’ve been such a huge success. We’ve sold around 1200 this season already, and it’s amazing seeing them on people from all over the world. I got sent a picture once about two years into our deal, from someone who was backpacking out in Australia, in the middle of nowhere, who went to this pub and sitting in the corner room was a bloke wearing our kit! It’s completely mad really. Then there’s all the stuff they’ve been doing here in Margate, with Pete and the boys performing at the first Meyba Night, which is a gig/festival sponsored by our kit manufacturer.

“The impact all of this has had on the community of people at the club is my favourite thing. Whether it’s the Premier League funding or things like The Libertines, it’s what it does for everyone involved here that’s amazing. Like our Young Carers initiative, where we host children who are looking after their parents. We give them breakfast, let them have a respite day and act like kids again. 

 ”They get to go in the changing rooms and all the players make a fuss out of them. Give them a signed program and shirt. That’s what it’s all about, really, isn’t it?” 

It very much is, Deny, it very much is.