Folkestone Invicta

Folkestone Invicta go into the season in the National League South, a division the club has never played in before, having won the Isthmian League Premier Division in 2025–26. Joe Pigott, a forward with EFL experience, arrived in 2025, under Jay Saunders, appointed the same year.

The original Folkestone F.C. folded in 1990, and Invicta, who had been playing in nearby Hythe, took over its identity and its ground at Cheriton Road in 1991. Promotion has come in stages since: the Kent League in 1991–92, the Isthmian League Division One South in 2015–16, and now the top step of the Isthmian pyramid.

The club's own worst spell had nothing to do with results. Administration in 2009–10 cost it a ten-point deduction, and it still reached the promotion play-offs that season. Far graver was 12 April 2005, when the striker Paul Sykes collapsed and died during a Kent Senior Cup semi-final against Margate; Invicta withdrew from that season's competition and later played a memorial game in his name.

Liam Friend's run of more than 700 appearances in black and amber stretches back through most of the club's post-1991 history. The one FA Cup run worth naming came in 2005–06, when Invicta reached the first round proper for the only time and lost to Chester City; the FA Trophy has been kinder, with a run to the fourth round in 2021–22 ended by Wrexham.

What Invicta have not done yet is win a Kent Senior Cup against any of the county rivals - Margate, Herne Bay, Ramsgate, Dartford, Maidstone United - that give the fixture its edge.