Margate F.C.

Margate Football Club, originally called Margate Town, is an English football club based in the seaside resort of Margate, Kent. The club's first team play in the . The club was known during the 1980s as Thanet United. The club was founded in 1896 and joined the Southern Football League in 1933. After a spell in the Kent League after World War II the team returned to the Southern League in 1959 and remained there until 2001 when they gained promotion to the Football Conference, the highest level of English non-League football. Their stay at this level saw the team forced to groundshare with other clubs due to drawn-out and problematic redevelopment work at their Hartsdown Park stadium. The stadium has been the home of Margate FC since 1929, the same year the park itself opened to the public, and during the three years spent away from their own ground, they were expelled from the Conference National and subsequently relegated to the Isthmian League. The team, nicknamed "The Gate", have to date reached the third round proper of England's premier cup competition, the FA Cup, on two occasions. On the second of these occasions they played Tottenham Hotspur, a First Division team and the reigning UEFA Cup holders. History