Dorking Wanderers FC

One of the best-named places in Britain. South of London, roughly equidistant between Crawley, Guildford, and Croydon.

One of the most remarkable stories in English football. Formed only in 1999 by ex-City banker Marc White, a local devastated by seeing his team Wimbledon fold, he and some friends decided to simply make their own club. They began life in Division 5 of the Crawley and District League, with Marc himself playing for the team.

What followed was remarkable: 12 promotions in 23 seasons, with Marc becoming manager during that time. They climbed from the seventeenth tier of English football to the fifth, earning promotion to the National League in 2022. In 2023 they suffered their first ever relegation and currently compete in the increasingly competitive National League South, having made the play-offs in each of the last two seasons as they fight to get back into the National League.

If you wanted to follow the exploits of this remarkable club, you absolutely can, and for free, on the YouTube channel “Bunch of Amateurs”, which has documented their journey with feature-length documentaries for several seasons now. It is a proper fans’ alternative to “Welcome to Wrexham”. Marc White’s “proper London geezer” charisma creates superb social media content as he takes the mick out of rivals and his own players during games.

So that’s the club. And the owner-manager.

What of the badge? Let’s address the elephant in the room: it looks like a fried chicken logo you would see on some declining high street.

But. But… it is also absolutely brilliant and has become iconic in the lower leagues.

It is a chicken. A Dorking chicken.

What is a Dorking chicken? Well. See the image. It’s a chicken. From Dorking.

The breed is famous amongst purveyors of poultry. Supposedly brought to England by the Romans, this five-toed chicken (most have four) was reported in and around the town by Roman writers.

Over the centuries it was selectively bred in the south of England, particularly around the market town of Dorking. Hence the chicken got its name. The Dorking chicken was a favourite amongst farmers for being hardy enough to survive cold winters, a top producer of eggs during months when other breeds slowed down, and very easy to keep. They are comfortable around humans and do not tend to wander off. Their meat is tender and delicate, and they are easy to “fatten for the pot”.

They were perfect, and made local farmers a very comfortable living. So comfortable, in fact, that the rumour was there was an unwritten rule preventing live chickens from leaving Dorking for fear of rivals getting hold of the breed.

Geography also played a role. The sandy soil around Dorking drained water well, creating dry conditions ideal for raising chickens. The soil also contained small stones and grit, which chickens swallow to help grind up and digest their food because they do not have teeth.

During the Victorian age, as Britain industrialised and cities like London grew, workers needed vast amounts of protein to fuel their labour. The chickens of Dorking stepped up to the plate. Literally.

Would it be too far to say this humble chicken powered the Industrial Revolution and therefore the Empire? Probably. But it is worth a shot.

As a market town, Dorking has a long history, with one writer in 1240 claiming the town had hosted two markets a week for longer than anyone could remember. It still runs a market today, so it has clearly been going a while. A Tudor writer even commented that it was the finest poultry market in all of England.

Aside from chickens, Dorking has exported its fair share of non-conformists and radicals. Six members of the Mayflower’s crew were from the town, and later the famed author Daniel Defoe (no relation to England striker Jermain Defoe) lived there. Today, a vineyard north of the town is one of the largest producers of English wine in the country, something to accompany the excellent poultry.

So there we have it. A football team that carries with it not just decades of remarkable fine-tuning on the pitch, but also the legacy of having spent centuries fine-tuning the perfect animal to feed the nation.

Only a foul would bet against this bunch of amateurs making it to the EFL before long.

I’m off to buy a Dorking shirt.