Few clubs were hit harder by the pandemic than Worthing – of the Isthmian League – but this promotion is just one chapter of a bigger story.
Having already wrapped up the Isthmian League Premier Division championship, they’ve had to make the last two home matches of the season for Worthing FC all-ticket. The capacity of The Crucial Environmental Stadium is frequently listed at 4,000, but is likely to be capped at around 2,600 for these two matches, and Worthing have already had two crowds of more than 2,000 this season for league derbies against Bognor Regis Town and Horsham.
It’s a celebration that’s been a long time coming. On March 26 2020, Worthing were seven points clear at the top of the same division, when it was decided to abandon the league season with no promotion or relegation. When the 2020/21 season was also abandoned, they’d only played eight games of the season, but Worthing were still top of the table, having played three games fewer than second-placed Cheshunt.
But this story stretches back 12 years. George Dowell was 17 years old at the time, and had just broken into the Worthing first-team squad, when he was in the passenger seat of a car that flipped off the bend in the road between Worthing and nearby Arundel. George broke his neck, two vertebrae in his back, and severed his spinal cord, leaving him paralysed from the chest down, while his friends walked away with only minor injuries.
When the compensation money for his life-altering injuries came through in 2015, Dowell decided to buy into his local football club, after hearing that it was more than £200,000 in debt and possibly heading towards bankruptcy. But his investment into the club didn’t end with paying down that debt. It’s known that he’s spent more than £600,000 since, and it might be as much as a million pounds. But this money hasn’t merely been frittered away. The ground has had a 3g artificial pitch installed, which allows for seven-day use, while…
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