Crabble Athletic Ground, Dover, Kent CT17 0JB
Kick-Off 3pm
FA Cup with Budweiser
Third Qualifying Round
Saturday 12th October 2013
Dover Athletic v AFC Rushden & Diamonds
AFC Rushden & Diamonds will play their fifth ever tie in the FA Cup on Saturday when they head south to face Dover Athletic in the Third Qualifying round in a run that has seen them defeat London Colney, Northwood, Cockfosters and Cambridge City.
Dover are a Non-League Step 2 club, playing in the Conference South – so will be the highest ranked team AFC Rushden & Diamonds have faced in their history.
Note that as Dover play in white shirts with black shorts, the Diamonds will be wearing their light blue third kit for this game.
Admission prices for this game are based on Dover’s standard Conference South prices (£13 adults, £10 seniors, £6 U18, £3 U11 with a further £1.50 for a stand seat).
Match Status information is here.
Should a replay be necessary this would be at the Dog & Duck on Tuesday evening – 15th October – KO 7:45pm.
The winner of the tie will play in the Fourth Qualifying Round on the weekend of 26th October. You can see more information on this season’s FA Cup on the FA Website here.
Our Opponents
There have been many different football clubs in the Dover area over the years, but the current club was formed in 1983, taking the place of the previous local club in the Southern League. They won promotion into the Conference in 1993 once they had satisfied ground grading requirements, with their best-placed finish being sixth in 1999-2000, and remainded there until 2002. They won promotion to Conference South from the Isthmian Premier in 2009.
You can read more about their history on their website here.
Their club colours are white shirts with black shorts, hence their nickname “Whites” and their club website is here and their twitter feed here. They are managed by Chris Kinnear.
Diamonds fans who followed RDFC may remember some of the meeting with the Whites during their initial stay in the Conference – you can see results and reports on the RDFC archive here.
Some of the Dover players that Diamonds fans may be familiar with having faced RDFC, include Terrell Forbes (ex-Yeovil Town), Michael Kamara (ex-Woking), Barry Cogan (ex-Crawley Town), Lee Hook (ex-Eastbourne Borough), and Craig Stone (ex-Ebbsfleet United).
Directions / Getting There
Dover FC play at Crabble Athletic Ground, Dover, Kent CT17 0JB. For directions for the trip of around 150 miles from the Dog and Duck see here.
The club has organized two supporters’ coaches for this fixture – see here for details.
Getting to the Crabble by public transport is an option. The most obvious route involves getting a train to St Pancras, and then switching to the South Eastern Highspeed service, with trains taking just over the hour to Dover Priory Station. You can either then make the walk of around two miles to the ground, or catch a bus – you can see a Dover bus map here. For door-to-door directions see the Traveline website.
To check whether you will be able to get mobile phone coverage at the ground please input the above postcode into one of the following coverage checkers:
Other Info
A summary set of profiles for the Diamonds Players and Management is here. The fixture list is here. Individual player profiles are here, with player and match stats available here.
Player and Match Sponsorship options are detailed in the Commercial Brochure as referenced here.
Latest fixture news is here, and specific match status information here along with the next planned fixture for the various AFC Rushden & Diamonds teams. Don’t forget you can get a regular Diamonds news bulletin delivered to your inbox, including details of all the forthcoming fixtures by signing up to the Club Newsletter – you will see a sign-up box on the right-hand side of the site homepage – just under the EA Sports Logo.
For details of the history of AFC Rushden & Diamonds see here.
There are details on how to become a member of AFC R&D here, as well as news on Season Tickets, Multiple Game Tickets and related prices here.
The club depends upon volunteer support from its fanbase. If you would like to join the group who help either on matchdays or behind the scenes see here.
A full directory of UCL clubs, including links to websites, ground details (with a map pinpointing all the UCL grounds), along with club links including Twitter details plus some general UCL links is here.
The UCL Handbook, along with links to competition rules for the current season are here.
