Home is where the Darts is (From News Shopper)

Home is where the Darts is

4:56pm Monday 13th November 2006 in

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When you have waited 14 years to come home, you want to make sure you do it in style. Sports editor TIM ASHTON was there to witness Dartford FC's glorious return from exile.

ON MY way to Princes Park I passed the team coach parked on the side of the road.

The Dartford players and management were amassed to applaud the unveiling of a blue plaque on the wall of a non-descript house.

Watch our video reports of Dartford FC's homecoming - click here and here

I was on Watling Street and the plaque marked the spot where a Darts player last kicked a ball in Dartford.

Half an hour later, the same team coach worked its way through hundreds of fans to pull up outside the new Princes Park stadium.

When the coach door opened the cheers were long and loud and when the players emerged, led by boss Tony Burman, you knew you were watching something special.

Dartford were no longer a nomadic football team, they had come home and had come a long way from where the blue plaque now rests.

There is still a lot of work to do in and around the ground and it was still going on as the fans converged for the historic day.

You can still smell the paint in the main stand's reception and with cables hanging from holes in the walls, you sensed getting the stadium ready for November 11 had been a very close thing.

But the game was on, the bands were playing, the children were having their faces painted and despite the intense cold there was a warmth emanating from the terraces.

Watching the council hand over the keys to the stadium to Dartford co-chairman Bill Archer, the elderly fans around me looked like children being given their Christmas present early - the excitement was etched across their faces.

The 4,097 fans, a record for the league, sang the National Anthem and heeded the words of a strange man in a cloak who blessed the ground.

The teams emerged between showers of fireworks to the thumping opening of The Rolling Stones' Start it Up - it felt like the start of the FA Cup final, not a Ryman League Division One South clash.

We were witnessing history and deep inside you knew this meant more than just a new home for a football team - it was the rebirth of a town's pride, a sign to the rest of the country from Dartfordians everywhere to say we're going places and no longer would they solely associated with a tunnel under the River Thames.

Come 3pm, there was the small matter of a football match.