DOVER ATHLETIC chairman Jim Parmenter has threatened to withdraw his investment if the club don’t start seeing more people coming through the turnstiles.
The Whites, who are in the hunt for a National League play-off spot, saw just 588 turn up to Crabble for their 2-1 defeat to Southport on Tuesday night.
Dover slipped to ninth in the table but Chris Kinnear’s side have games in hand and the club had planned to make some ground improvements to bring Crabble up to Football League standard.
However, Parmenter says they may not go ahead, and he may walk away from the club altogether, if attendances don’t start climbing.
Dover have averaged 921 through the gates this season which is below what Parmenter believes they should be attracting.
The chairman, who estimates he has spent £3m on the club over the past 11 years as they rose from Ryman South to Non-League‘s top tier, told the BBC: “We should be getting crowds of 1,000 plus where we are and what we are doing.
“I am going to walk away from trying to get this club to the Football League unless the people of Dover get behind the club, There is no point in me investing hundreds of thousands of pounds if that is not what the people want.
“I’ve all but confirmation of a £400,000 grant to rebuild a stand, with League-standard dressing rooms. It involves personal expenditure of close to half a million pounds.
“When the grant is finalised – and it should be finalised in the next week – we have got six months to start building. If we don’t start building we won’t be able to get promotion. I am not going to do it unless the people want it.
“Everyone in the area needs to make up their mind – do they want a club that is ready to go in the league, or do they want us to go back down to the Ryman League and play local football? If that is what people want, fine. I am ready to say ‘I give in’.”
