Maidstone United: 10 Things

Maidstone United Football Club is a professional English football club based in Maidstone, Kent. They currently compete in the National League, the fifth tier of English football. Currently managed by Jay Saunders.
They were founded in 1992 as Maidstone Invicta but changed their name to Maidstone United.
They play at the Gallagher Stadium in Maidstone which can hold up to 4,191 people (792 seated) The stadium was opened in the 2012-13 season; they were without their own stadium since their creation.
The club is owned by Oliver Ash and Terry Casey, with Bill Williams in the position of Chief Executive.
They played in the Isthmian League Premier Division from 2013 having been promoted from the Isthmian League Division One South and won the league in the 2014–15 season to gain promotion to the National League South (formerly the Conference South) for the 2015–16 season. Maidstone gained a second successive promotion to the National League in 2016, bringing fifth-tier football back to the town for the first time since the old club was promoted to the Football League in 1989
The club has a dedicated TV channel “Stones TV” provided by the club, which broadcasts highlights of matches, interviews and archive footage. Stones Live! is a radio station run since 2008, offering commentary from most matches plus other club-related content. It was voted Sports Station of the Year at the 2010–11 Internet Radio Awards
In addition to an official website, there have been a number of other websites dedicated to the Stones, including the “Neolithic Man”, which was live for some of the County League era. A fanzine site “Plastic Passion” was launched in February 2014, in part to celebrate one of the most successful eras in the club’s history
Plastic Passion spawned a spin off book, believed to be the first ever Maidstone United e-book, “When I was Just a Little Boy” in 2016. A second book, this time available in physical form, “Exodus” was published in December 2016, detailing the period between 1988 and 2012 and the struggle to find a permanent home
Maidstone fans have traditionally had a strong rivalry with Gillingham. The old Maidstone are the only other Kent club to ever join Gillingham in the Football League, and the sides contested games in the old Division 4 and FA Cup in the late 80s and early 90s
Since Sutton United re-laid their pitch at Gander Green Lane in August 2015 with 3G artificial turf, Maidstone have contested a series of matches with them which fans have dubbed El Plastico (a reference to El Clásico).