The new club became a stalwart of the Southern League, yo-yoing up and down between divisions for a while and making hay with the odd good FA Cup run. Always an ambitious outfit, the Fleet were one of the first club's in the country to install floodlighting in 1953 and around the same time even went full-time for a couple of years in an unsuccesful effort to push for Football League status. However any temporary success attained always seemed to be followed by setbacks and such has been the story of Gravesend and Northfleet since - a series of promotions followed pretty quickly by relegation and always with a lack of cash to consolidate on any success.

A vague Yeovil connection with the club typifies the Fleet's history: The club were going through a succesful phase in the late 70's and were amongst the founder members of the Conference (or the Alliance as it was then known), finishing that first season a very creditable fifth and hoping to push on from that solid base in the years to come. By January '82 however the club were stuck in the bottom three and looking at relegation - former Glovers manager Stan Harland was brought in to perform a rescue act, but sadly for both Stan and the Fleet a combination of huge debts and cost-cutting meant relegation was inevitable.

The years that followed saw more yo-yoing between divisions in the Southern League until in 1997 a new board decided a change of direction was needed to prevent the club becoming moribund. Accordingly the club resigned from the Southern League and joined the Isthmian, curent manager Andy Ford taking over the reins following a largely disappointing first season in the new league. Since then the Fleet have come into a new succesful phase, winning the Kent Senior Cup twice in three years and then beating off the challenge of the highly-rated Canvey Island in the Isthmian title chase last season to earn promotion to the Conference.

Gravesend's ground is one of those large, mainly terraced affairs that thousands could fit comfortably into with no real problems but has since been emasculated by safety restrictions. The club have spent £150,000 over the close season bringing it up to current Conference standards, but a mandated capacity of 4,000 with only 660 seats means the club are going to have to invest even more heavily should they wish to remain in the top flight of non-league football past 2004.

Prediction corner
Manager Andy Ford hasn't gone mad over the summer, largely sticking by the men who got the club promoted from the Isthmian last season, and adding in the main experienced Conference players to the mix. The club don't appear to have any so-called stars in it's line-up but proved by out-lasting a very good Canvey Island team last season that their first-choice line-up will be a match for most this season. It's doubtful whether they'll have the strength in depth to sustain a play-off challenge, but we don't expect them to be worrying about relegation either. Final position: 13th, or thereabouts. Comfortably mid-table, anyway.

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