Whitehawk vs Dagenham & Redbridge: Whitehawk can make a noise in the FA Cup by taking The Din to Everton

The ambitious non-league club with the wonderfully eccentric fans face Dagenham on Wednesday night in the FA Cup with the prize a trip to Goodison Park. Nick Szczepanik hears how victory would put them on the map

Jordan Rose of Whitehawk celebrates after he scores a last minute equaliser during the Emirates FA Cup Second Round match against Dagenham & Redbridge (GETTY IMAGES)

They may sound more like a heavy metal band than a non-league club, and their name gives little clue to their geographical location, but Whitehawk will put themselves on the football map if they beat Dagenham & Redbridge of League Two in Wednesday night's home FA Cup second-round replay. The prize for victory is a third-round tie away to Everton, and a by-product will be a place in the consciousness of football supporters previously only dimly aware of their existence because one of their former players, Michael Boateng, was later convicted of conspiracy to fix matches.

Even if they fail to progress, the Hawks intend to make a name for themselves with promotion from National League South, in which they presently hover in fifth place. And if they had their way, that name would not be Whitehawk.

Described coyly as coming from “a Brighton suburb” in some reports of their 1-1 draw in the first match, Whitehawk take their name from a council estate with a poor local reputation, but attempts to rebrand the club as Brighton City raised objections from both the Football Association and Brighton & Hove Albion.

The owners’ thinking is that nobody outside the city knows where Whitehawk is, and those inside do not like the idea of going to watch football there, even though the club’s Enclosed Ground, capacity 2,000, is not on the estate itself but in the leafy surroundings of East Brighton Park, with as many grazing sheep casting an eye over events on the pitch as spectators at some games.

The ground, though, will be a shock to Dagenham in Wednesday's televised match, with only two small covered stands and one empty side, and a pitch like no other. “It not only slopes end to end but side to side as well and from one corner flag to the other on the diagonal it drops 16 feet,” manager Steve King says. “So it’s one hell of a gradient.”

At the foot of the slope is The Din, the stand that houses the ironically self-styled “ultras,” who create a cacophony with a dozen or so drummers, and sticks are handed out for everyone else to bang on the metal walls, which have come to resemble the inside of steel drums from the regular beatings. When the percussion briefly goes quiet, expect to hear a selection of chants that reflect their anti-racist, anti-abuse views, the worst insult flung at officials being “the referee’s a referee”. At corners and free-kicks, “key moments”, bunches of keys are rattled in unison.

“It is an unbelievable atmosphere,” says King, the manager since February last year, who has a successful record in non-league and took Macclesfield Town to the fourth round in 2013. “I’ve been in non-league football for 12, 14 years now, maybe 600-700 games, and I’ve never seen fans like it. This group of fans is ridiculous. They are not one type. You’ll see old-fashioned skinheads with the boots and braces, men with big long beards, women in fur coats, people with piercings through the nose, eyelids, cheeks – an array of people, but lovely, lovely people. They won’t swear, and they support the team even when we’re 2-0 down, a unique group.”

Promotion is the aim this season after defeat in the play-off final last time, but King knows that talk of the Cup being a distraction from the serious business is not realistic in his situation. “Of course, the big thing you dream of in non-league football is a good cup run and you don’t get those chances often,” he says.

The immediate rewards for reaching the third round, including a fee for live TV, prize money and a share of the gate at Goodison, could reach seven figures, which will be good news for co-owners John Summers and Peter McDonnell who, despite attendances only in the low hundreds, have funded three promotions in five years and the signings of players such as Sergio Torres, who played for Crawley Town away to Manchester United in the fifth round five seasons ago, and locally born forward Jake Robinson, a proven goalscorer at league level.

“They are ambitious, they want to go up and are talking about a new stadium,” King says. “But wages-wise, they are not paying unbelievable money. We’re not in the top five of playing budgets in our division, nowhere near the levels some are paying. The crowd average has gone from 200 when I joined 18 months ago to nearly 400 and the last few we have had over a thousand and we are hoping that after this Cup run, we get to keep some of those supporters, because it is a fantastic story and it would be a crying shame if they disappear. And not many non-league teams are playing the football we play. The Maidstone website said we were a pleasure to watch after we beat them last week.”

That football was too good for League Two Dagenham for long spells in the first game, even though Whitehawk needed an injury-time equaliser to force the replay, but King is wary of suggestions that they have done the hard part of the job. “Their manager [Wayne Burnett] makes us favourites but I don’t see that,” he said. “The bottom line is that we’re a Conference South side, they’re a League Two side. I believe we should have won the game up there and we played well enough to, especially in the second half, we missed a number of chances, but this will be tougher. I know him well and he’s saying that he wouldn’t accept the performance they gave. He will make sure they step up another a gear so we have to do the same.”