White’s current squad are not a collection of expensive new recruits midfielder Jerome Beckles has been with the club for 10 years. Was he worth it? Yeah, he’s unbelievable.” We needed a prolific centre-forward, a finisher – and that was something our partners actually paid for. “The first player we paid money for was Jason Prior from Havant, who cost £15,000. He says he has used his background in business to build an extensive network of local sponsors who are prepared to invest in the squad. White’s ambitious project has, like Salford’s, attracted envious glances from rivals, but White stresses there are “no sugar daddies” behind the scenes. He said Gary Neville had a lot of the same problems trying to set up a training ground in Stretford.” David Beckham had just got involved with Salford, so we had a chat. “I’m friends with Calum Best, and we went up to Old Trafford for the PSG game. Struggling to find a way forward, White turned to some famous names for help. But this is what goes into running a non-league club.” One guy said our floodlights were ruining his stargazing. I went to meetings, and people were angry. Every fence post, every seat, had to be signed off. Sandwiched between “millionaires’ row” and protected countryside, developing the ground was “a nightmare. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian ‘It’s become a real hub of the community’. “There was no power, no water, nothing there.” “It was literally just a field,” White says. It was Dorking’s second home, at nearby Westhumble, that fostered a surge through the Sussex County League – but also the most challenging stage of the club’s development. We got promoted, so we had to put a rope round the pitch! That becomes a fixed barrier, then paths, floodlights, seats … now we’re in a 3,000-capacity stadium.” “As you move through the leagues, you have to keep building infrastructure. The modern-day Dorking Wanderers have been built “hand to mouth, brick by brick”, according to White. Now, I’ve got four coaches, three physios, a scouting team behind me.” We got out of jail that year and won the league the next season.
“We were stone bottom of the league, and I realised I couldn’t keep playing. “The first seven games that year, we lost all seven,” says White. Within five years, they had reached the top division – and hit their first roadblock.
The meteoric rise began with a sideways move, into the four-tier West Sussex League in 2000. “It’s like real-life Championship Manager.” “We’ve had 11 promotions in 19 years,” a British record, he says. The club he owns and manages are in the National League South, two promotions from the Football League. Twenty years on, White is sitting in the main stand at Meadowbank, the team’s gleaming stadium.
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