Maidstone United: The demise and rise of an expelled Football League club
This is the story of Maidstone United, the last club before Bury to be expelled from the English Football League. For the past 27 years they have been trying to return to the pinnacle of their football existence. But this is not a club that sees itself as a football tragedy – not with more than 20 trophies and eight promotions won since 1992 and an England international among its alumni. “It is a tragic episode in our story. That is what it is, because the story is still going,” said John Still, Maidstone’s head of football who returned to the club last season after 30 years away. Still says there was no “romanticism” in the reunion, despite them being back in the fifth tier last term, the level he left the club at in 1989 having been the boss that took them to the old Fourth Division. He simply felt his former club had run out of “momentum” – the sort that gets a team from Kent County League Fourth Division to the top tier of the non-league system. The 69-year-old, however, was not able to guide them to safety last season as they…