It’s 20 years to the day since Margate played in the top flight of non-league football for the first time in their history.

Chris Kinnear’s appointment at Hartsdown Park in 1996 was the start of a golden period for the club.

They won promotion from the Southern League Southern Division as runners-up to Havant in the 1998/99 campaign.

Two years later they beat Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion to the Premier Division title, finishing with 91 points.

The opening day of the Conference season could hardly have been tougher, with Margate away to big-spending title favourites Boston, managed by current Gills boss Steve Evans, on Saturday, August 18, 2001.

Evans’ side - the eventual champions - were every bit as dominant as expected but Margate stood firm and stunned the hosts when Leon Braithwaite scored a late penalty.

“It’s a wonder I let him take the penalty,” joked Kinnear. “He couldn’t kick a ball straight - but he could run.

“They were a good bunch of lads, everyone enjoyed each other’s company and there was a great spirit in that team.

“Honestly, they were such a selfless bunch.

“Usually you get a selfish player in a team but everyone was doing it for each other and that’s the type of player I always used to look for.

“John Keister was the only one who’d been there and done it but he still had the right attitude.

“I remember the game at Boston because Steve Evans was screaming and shouting, he was bright red and I told him to calm down because he’d give himself a heart attack. Their coach fell about laughing.

“I went on the radio afterwards and said we only defended a lot because they were attacking a lot. What were we supposed to do - get out the way and let them score?

“I got on well with him after that, we were good friends for quite a long time and had a lot of respect for each other, but he did his thing and I did mine and we lost contact.

“Nobody knew our players. Who was Jay Saunders? Who was Leon Braithwaite? But they were an amazing bunch of lads.

“We were never frightened of anyone. I always fancied us because we were very mobile and very focused and then after the game they’d all act like madmen and muck about.

“It was great travelling with them, with the spirit we had.

“You learn how important that is as a manager.

“I played for Barry Fry and learned a lot from him on that side of things. He didn’t say anything about football, his ethos was team spirit and all my sides had that.

“You’ll probably find a lot of those players still keep in contact today because they became good mates.

“We weren’t on much money compared to a lot of sides, they were playing because they didn’t want to let their mates down.

“Everyone complicates things, don’t they?

“Players usually come in and they’ve played for different managers who instil certain ideas.

“When they signed for Margate, my approach was whatever you’ve learned from other managers, we do what we do.

“Everyone knew what to do and we scored a lot of goals.

“People always said my sides were defensive but that wasn’t true. How can we be defensive when we only played three defenders?

“The full-backs were up the other end crossing the ball to each other.

“I never explained the way we played because I didn’t want to educate other managers but we were all about attacking and when we didn’t have the ball, we wanted to get it back as quick as possible.

"We didn’t play tiki-taka football, we got the ball forward quickly, but Liverpool do that and people rave about them.”

The win over Boston was a dream start for Margate and the fairytale continued as a 2-1 midweek victory over Stevenage sent them top of the table in late September.

They would go on to finish eighth that year - a phenomenal achievement for the pre-season relegation favourites.

Saunders, now in charge at Margate, has vivid memories of beating Boston and the Conference era.

He said: “I remember it clearly because Steve Evans was the manager, they were favourites for the league and throwing money about.

“We went there as new boys and I remember getting the runaround for 90 minutes from Mike Marsh, the old Liverpool midfielder.

“Chris had been telling me to get tight and he said well done to me after the game but I don’t think I touched the ball - I was just chasing this bloke about for 90 minutes.

“They absolutely battered us and then we got the penalty and won 1-0.

“We were on the coach after the game celebrating and Steve Evans came on the radio hammering us.

“He said if we played like that every week, we’ll go straight back down, but I think we were probably around the top five at Christmas.

“One thing I do remember about that league was going into the changing room and seeing your name on your shirt.

“It gave you a buzz and you felt like you were in a professional league.

“We had a side that didn’t give up, we won promotions on the back of it.

“We’d win games 1-0, even if we’d been outplayed, and we were so solid defensively with the boys we had at the back, like Bill Edwards and Iain O’Connell.

“Hartsdown Park had that big slope at the time and teams hated coming there.

“They’d turn up and be like, ‘What is this?’

“But we knew how to play the pitch and even if things weren’t going well, we had a group of lads who would run through brick walls for each other and we ground out results.

“We were horrible to play against - it was horrible to play in sometimes - but we knew what we were about and we shocked a lot of teams.

“I think after Christmas, when we were playing everyone again, teams had started to find us out a little bit more, and that made it more difficult, but it was a great time and I was probably the youngest player in that side.”

Margate finished 10th and 16th in the following two seasons and also knocked Football League Leyton Orient out of the FA Cup in a first-round replay.

But rumbling away in the background were problems with the redevelopment of Hartsdown Park which would eventually lead to Margate’s downfall.

Gate had spent their second and third seasons in the Conference groundsharing at Crabble before the league pulled the plug and demoted them to Conference South.

“We were never relegated on the pitch,” said Kinnear.

“If things had been different and we’d got the ground, who knows what might have happened?

“But we had a lovely time there, they were such nice people.

“No one had heard of Margate and then we had the FA Cup run in 1997 when we played Fulham at home on the telly, not long after Ray Wilkins and Kevin Keegan had taken over.

“Keith Piper and I went up to Harrods to meet Mohamed al Fayed and he entertained us. My kids, Chris and Faye, were given presents which they’ve still got today.

“They were really good times. We had the best food of any team we’d ever been to, they really looked after people, and you were proud to be there.”

Kinnear enjoyed a number of close relationships with directors including Keith Piper and Colin Page, and long-serving secretary Ken Tomlinson.

Tomlinson, who saw his first Margate game in 1946, has seen it all over the years.

One of his overriding memories came at the end of Gate’s Southern League championship season when they travelled to runners-up Burton on the final day.

With the title already in the bag it was a dead rubber but there was a famous face waiting to congratulate the champions at full-time.

“Burton won 2-0 on the day but that didn’t matter,” said Tomlinson.

“We met Brian Clough after the game. He came in the dressing room and shook all the players’ hands and congratulated them.

“I had a nice chat with him and got his autograph - he was a smashing bloke. All he was talking about was Geoff Boycott, where he loved his cricket.

“It was funny because about 45 minutes before the game, all of a sudden the ground went dead and then everybody stood up and started clapping. It was Cloughie walking in with his two grandchildren.”

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