Fleeting: Ebsfleet United — Terrace Edition

Words: Sam Wainwright

Images: Sam Wainwright

Sam Wainwright has an eye for a face in the crowd and also individual figures at games. He was shortlisted for the 2019 Portrait Of Britain Competition and found home at Ebbsfleet FC.

Here he discusses his journey from the Den to Stonebridge Road, with many photographs in between.

I was always a Millwall FC fan. My family are all from South East London but when I was a kid we moved to Gravesend in Kent.

All through my youth I was football crazy and as my Dad was as a ticket tout, I was lucky to be able to go to loads of matches in the top division before the Premier League.

We also used to go to see the local football team Gravesend and Northfleet quite regularly too. At the time they were in the Beazer Homes League so the football wasn't great, although in 1996 Gravesend did make it to the third round of the FA Cup and we played Aston Villa at Villa Park, which was incredible, although we lost three-nil.

Fast forward to the early 2000s and I was living in London and a season ticket holder at Millwall although I did keep an eye on the Gravesend results (now called Ebbsfleet United to tie in with the train station of the same name).

This also tied in with me taking up photography and being obsessed with the images by Ken Grant of football fans in Liverpool.

In early 2022 my wife and I decided to move to Gravesend after years of living in London. The first weekend we were here I saw Ebbsfleet United were playing at home so I grabbed my camera and decided to go along and loved it straight away.

Since then I think I have missed a handful of home games and at every game document both the home fans and the away fans. I have even started to work at the club in the ticket office and on the turnstiles!

This project is ongoing and I can't see it ending anytime soon. Up the Fleet.