This week’s Friday round-up has an unexpectedly musical theme, taking in Gravesend, REM and Green Day …

CAN’T BUY ME LUUU-UUURVE

While other non-league clubs hire documentary crews, influencers, “storytellers”, Maidstone can save tens of thousands of pounds simply by pointing to Stonebridge Road every time someone questions the way the club is run.

The Fleet are at their “Mark English” phase. Their takeover has supposedly been completed but nobody has yet heard anything from their new owner, John O’Leary. His representative, Roddy Collins, gave a surreal interview to Charles Webster last week, but The National League extended their suspension to include both this weekend’s games.

It sounds grim, but if Fleet fans are looking for hope, their Chief Executive Damian Irvine’s LinkedIn profile says, under areas of expertise: “Sustainable and innovative commercial strategy”, “regulatory compliance” and “executive level financial management”. He sounds like the ideal man to get them out of this.

SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE

Somewhat surreally Irvine also has a Wikipedia page, although it does come with the disclaimer “this article contains promotional content”. The article suggests that he’s part of a band called Socata, with guitarist Ken Stringfellow, whose worked with REM and was the lead singer of Posies. During lockdown they recorded two tracks called “Nice Things” and “Fine and Dando” which sounds like a tribute to the Lemonheads. These tracks are available on both Amazon and Spotify and they really aren’t bad, although with the royalties amounting to $0.004 per listen, it’ll take approximately five billion downloads to cover the losses the Fleet have made over the last decade and a half.

“SUZI QUATRO LIVES IN CHELMSFORD”

Irvine isn’t the only prominent local figure involved in the music scene. BBC Radio Kent’s Matt Cole has been the lead singer of the Tunbridge Wells band Joeyfat for the last 35 years. They’ve supported Green Day, recorded a Peel Session and appeared live on 6 Music with Marc Riley. Riley was clearly a fan but told them, “you’re not great at selling yourselves, are you?”

Which was a fair comment. Cole’s musical career was only recently discovered by some of his colleagues at Kent Cricket. One of his lyrics reads: “”Who’s in the box?” and when one of his fellow reporters asked him exactly this question, it took him several seconds to realise his own words were being quoted back at him.

One of their earlier works was called “Suzi Quatro Lives in Chelmsford.” This is apparently true: her house, Hyde Hall was listed for £2.3 million in 2009, meaning it would be worth roughly £4 million today. You could run Eastbourne Borough for two to three years on that.

HE DRINKS A WHISKY DRINK, HE DRINKS A LAGER DRINK …

The trip to Walton highlighted an issue that is only going to get worse in the short and probably the long term.

Fans frequently complain about away ends having no shelter. This is the first time I can ever remember there being complaints about no shade. The temperature was 28 degrees, which is bad enough in direct sunlight. On the previous two days it was in the mid-thirties.

It clearly wasn’t designed with National South, or segregation in mind. Richard Tice says we should “enjoy” heat waves, but it’s just possible he’s a moron who’d lose a battle of wits with a festering mound of rhino shit. Clubs urgently need to consider water fountains (as opposed to bars) for fans whose idea of staying hydrated doesn’t involve the intravenous consumption of eight pints of Bishop’s Ringpiece on a match day.

STOP US IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE

Walton & Hersham’s ground was sold, you’ve guessed it, for housing, in 2017, with the £23 million raised going towards the “Elmbridge Sports Hub” on the banks of the Thames. The idea was that the two clubs would share the ground, but The Casuals folded in 2022. One of the reasons they folded was because they were struggling to make any money from the bars at the ground. Walton & Hersham fans are now talking about boycotting the bars for similar reasons. This is unlikely to end well.

Ryan Royston at Walton in 2007.

THE HEADMASTER RITUAL

We’d been to the “Elmbridge Sports Hub” before, in 2007, when it was the Waterside Stadium, home to the now defunct Walton Casuals. On the final day of the season we won the Isthmian South Division with a 2-1 win with two of the least subtle goals you’ll ever see: Aaron Lacy throw-ins that went straight to the head of Ryan Royston. It has to be one of the top 10 most nerve-wracking games we’ve ever been involved in. Bill Williams spent the second half looking like he was about to give birth to kittens. Ryan Royston, incidentally, is now the headteacher of SST Maidstone.