Full name | Ebbsfleet United Football Club |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | The Fleet |
Founded | 1946 (as Gravesend & Northfleet) |
Ground | Stonebridge Road, Northfleet |
Capacity | 5,011 (500 seated) |
Owner | KEH Sports Ltd |
Chairman | Dr Abdulla Al-Humaidi |
Manager | Daryl McMahon |
League | National League South |
2015–16 | National League South, 2nd |
Ebbsfleet United Football Club is a football club in Northfleet, Kent, England, which is in the National League South, the sixth tier of English football. The team plays home matches at Stonebridge Road.
Before 2007, the club was called Gravesend & Northfleet. Between 2008 and 2013, the club was owned by the web-based venture MyFootballClub, whose members voted on player transfers, budgets and ticket prices among other things instead of those decisions being made exclusively by the club's management and staff as at most other clubs.
Gravesend & Northfleet F.C. was formed in 1946, following the Second World War, after a merger between Gravesend United (originally formed in 1893) and Northfleet United (originally formed in 1890) with the new club retaining the red & white home colours (and the Stonebridge Road stadium) of Northfleet United. From 1969 and 1971, Roy Hodgson, who later became manager of the national teams of Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Finland and England, was a player at the club, making 59 appearances. In 1979, the team was one of the founder members of the Alliance Premier League, but were relegated back into the Southern League Premier Division three seasons later.
For the 1997–98 season, Gravesend & Northfleet left the Southern League and joined the Isthmian League. They played in the Premier Division of the league until the 2001–02 season, when they finished as champions and earned promotion back into the Football Conference, where they remained until being relegated to the Conference South at the end of the 2009–10 season.