Dover chairman Jim Parmenter wants his club to be known as the great entertainers.

A blistering start to the season has seen the free-scoring Whites net 24 times in just six league games and they sit second in the table.

While others might have promotion as their number one aim, after four tough campaigns that saw Dover drop from the National League to Isthmian Premier, this season is all about enjoyment.

There’s smiles back on people’s faces – even Jim has an extra spring in his step – and the air of negativity that has stuck to Dover in recent years has been replaced by a fresh outlook.

“I don’t have any long-term ambitions, I just want to win every game and entertain people, that’s where we’re at,” insisted Mr Parmenter.

“It’s nice to have people with smiles on faces and Crabble rocking rather than having a pop after the game.

“It’s been absolutely brilliant so far, we keep pinching ourselves.

“We’re not going to read too much into it, it’s only six games in and it’s still only September but it’s a very good start.

“We want to put out a team that entertains and try to keep the supporters happy with something they want to watch in terms of the standard and type of football.

“The expectation was to do that and then see hopefully if we finish in the top 10, that would have been a very good result.”

The chairman has set an ambitious target of 1,000 fans for their next two home games.

Dover host Wingate & Finchley on Saturday, September 28 before a midweek home match with Bognor on October 8.

“The gates are doing well, I want to target 1,000 home supporters for the next two games,” said Mr Parmenter.

“I think that’s massively important. Against Dartford we had just over 1,000 but 2-300 of those were from Dartford. Our target is to try and get all our supporters together to push us to 1,000 by bringing a friend or encouraging people to come, that’s our next big target.

“We’ve had a loyal fanbase of around 500 or 600 who have been fantastic all the way through.

“Now we’re doing better and entertaining people that’s gone up to 800 or 850 and if we can carry on playing the way we are then I’m hopeful we can get it to 1,000. Then we can push on and do more things.

“We’ve put lots of things in, we make fresh pizza on site, relaxed our drinking rules, reduced queues in the bar, but at the end of the day what brings people in is winning games and playing good football.

“As long as we keep doing that, we’ll continue to try and improve things around the ground.”

Off the pitch, the current financial outlook is described as “good”.

“We’re working within our means,” said Mr Parmenter.

“We’ve been fortunate with sponsors, Megger are the biggest one but we’ve also got Delivered News and five or six local businesses that have come onboard and want to work with the club going forward so we’ve got quite a bit of commercial sponsorship around us.”

The club have also been rebuilding their community links in recent months. It’s an area Mr Parmenter conceded they’d taken their eye off, for obvious reasons.

“We’re focusing very heavily on getting more involved in the community,” he said. “Megger are our main sponsor, they’re involved heavily in our work in the community and Vikki Pawley, our community engagement and inclusion officer, is doing a great job.

“We’ve got the youth teams back in under the main club umbrella and we’re starting girls and ladies’ football as well as all sorts of community initiatives.

“It was funding and personnel previously, and maybe concentration on trying to keep alive rather than trying to expand our community activities.

“Megger have been very good at funding our community activities therefore we’ve been able to focus time working on that side of things.

“If you go back to 2005 when we took over, we had two or three years when we had to get the club out of financial difficulty. Then the focus was on trying to get promoted to the Football League which we got very close to, and then financial issues hit followed by Covid.

“We lost sight, really, of our place in the community as a football club and it’s really important to concentrate on getting that back.”

There’s already a number of new faces around Crabble volunteering their services to help the club progress. And the door’s still open for others who want to get involved.

“Listen, the more people we have involved the better,” stressed Mr Parmenter.

“There’s always things that people can help us with and we’re always very pleased to speak to anybody that wants to help us.

“Clubs like this with a big stadium, we’ve got a 6,000 capacity that takes a lot of running and a lot of work, the more people that help the better it is for the club.”

There’s certainly a sense of togetherness that Dover could have been accused of lacking at times in the past.

This season there doesn’t seem to be a disconnect between the club, the players and their fanbase.

“We’ve got a team full of young, ambitious players,” said Mr Parmenter, who was part of a club evening out following the win over Dartford.

“We’ve got players that want to play for the club and want to be here, there’s a great team bond among them and that will carry us forward.

“I was there for the early part but I’m too old to do the latter bit! We were with them, myself and my wife and some of the staff, at the start but we left the night out bit to the youngsters.

“The bond is massively important, everyone needs to sing off the same sheet and have the same goals and ambitions in life.”

Visit www.kentonline.co.uk/sport on Thursday for the second part of our interview with Dover chairman Jim Parmenter