Kingstonian

The name comes first, and it comes from the YMCA, which set up Kingston & Surbiton YMCA in Stanwell in 1885. The badge that followed took several turns before it settled: Saxons, then Kingston Wanderers, then Kingston upon Thames A.F.C., until a 1919 reunion with a breakaway side, Old Kingstonians, produced the club known today as Kingstonian, or "The Ks".

The best of it came in a rush at the end of the 1990s. Geoff Chapple took the Isthmian League Premier Division in 1997–98 and followed it with back-to-back FA Trophy wins in 1999 and 2000, a feat no other club had managed in successive seasons. The FA Cup run that came soon after still gets talked about: in 2000–01 the Ks beat two Football League sides, Brentford and Southend United, before Bristol City ended it in the fourth round.

What followed the high point undid a lot of it. The club went into administration in 2001 carrying £800,000 of debt, and the developer who took control, Rajesh Khosla, sold Kingsmeadow for £2 million. Chelsea's purchase of that ground pushed Kingstonian out for good in 2017, and the years since have been spent without a place to call their own — first at the Kingfisher Ground, and now arranged to groundshare with Ashford Town (Middlesex) at the Robert Parker Stadium, which holds 2,550, from the 2026–27 season.

The local needle still points at Sutton United, a derby that outlasted the ground it used to be played near. Adrian Blake kept goal through 247 appearances before the club left Kingsmeadow behind, a run that spans most of the era Kingstonian has since been trying to get back to. What the club has not managed since 2000 is a return to a stadium it can call home.