Margate FC's Champions League winner and rock'n'roll sponsor
A non-league football player-manager says he knows how influential he can be at the club as he brings Champions League experience to the Kent lower leagues.As a teenager Ben Greenhalgh took home a Champions League medal with Inter Milan but now plies his trade with eighth-tier side Margate FC.The former Maidstone and Dartford midfielder says he aims to "go in, put my most into it and hope the club succeeds".He says: "There's a lot of special things about non-league. I think it's a bit more real because you know the fans, and you know how influential you can be to that club."
Greenhalgh was 17 when he featured on Sky's Football's Next Star, and won a year's contract at Inter Milan.First team manager Jose Mourinho took an interest in the academy, which meant he often trained with the first team in a year that they won the treble.He travelled with the squad to Madrid, alongside the likes of Wesley Sneijder, Javier Zanetti, and Samuel Eto'o, and they beat Bayern Munich 2-0 in the Champions League final.It's a story celebrated by Margate fans, who have a song about him, singing "Champions League, he's won that too, now he's at Margate, playing in blue."
Formed in 1896, Margate FC benefits from the rock'n'roll backing of The Libertines, who sponsor the club's shirts and own a hotel in the area.Links with The Libertines mean the shirts' appeal goes well beyond Margate fans, with kitman Frankie Empsom saying: "It's a godsend for a non-league club like ourselves, something like the sales of the shirt eases the costs paid out for the running of the club."Frankie looks after the kits for seven teams who play at Margate, using two washing machines which he calls Gert and Daisy.He said: "The fact they play in a white kit away can be a nightmare."The club plays in the Isthmian League South East, the eight tier of English football, and is described as "family-orientated", Frankie's sister, Maggie, says. Alongside Frankie, Maggie sells the programmes, and her daughter, Terry, is famous at the club for banging her drum on the sidelines.
Terry went to her first game in 1978 when her uncle Frankie was supposed to be babysitting. Maggie joked: "I never should've let him babysit."Terry has only missed four games in the last 13 years, most recently when she started a new job at a nearby care home, which you can see from the club's Hartsdown ground."They can hear me from there so they know when it's matchday. "I said when I started I'll work all the hours you want but not a Saturday or a Tuesday night," she said.Asked why she does it, she said: "It's almost like therapy, because if you've had a bad week and can get all the angst out by cheering the lads on, it's very cathartic."
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