Folkestone Invicta have appealed for new investors to come forward and help them rejoin Kent non-league football’s elite by getting promoted to Conference South.

Neil Cugley’s side have qualified for the Ryman League Division 1 South play-offs for the fourth season running and with the club now debt-free, they feel ready to compete at Step 3 should they go up.

But Invicta have even greater aspirations now. They want to join Dover, Dartford, Ebbsfleet, Maidstone and Margate in the upper echelons of the county game and restore the club to its former glory.

Cugley said: "I supported Folkestone when I was a kid and they were a massive club. This used to be one of the biggest clubs in non-league.

"Whether we could get back to those days without finances, it would be a bit difficult and I don’t know whether we could get that far back up – but you’ve got to dream, haven’t you?

"You’ve always got to be progressive in what you’re trying to do, so let’s try to go up and then raise the money to stay in that league (Ryman Premier). The players want it and I want it.

"If you go up to that next league, you’ve got to then try to go to Conference South. That’s the big league and you’d start getting your crowds back, playing Ebbsfleet, Bromley, Dartford etc.

"You go up to the Ryman Premier to try to get out of it. We’d need to give it a go because that’s the league (Conference South) where the better grounds are.

"Look at the crowds in the Ryman Premier – they’re not that good. You get bigger crowds if you’re playing Ebbsfleet or Maidstone.

"We’ve got to be looking to go up two leagues. It’s going to be difficult but that is our aim.

"Don’t forget, a few years ago we were playing those sort of teams here.

"Can we make this a bigger club again? I don’t know – that comes back to money. It will all come back to finance, it doesn’t matter who’s the manager. This club needs to generate a lot more money to become a big club again."

Folkestone chairman Jim Pellatt admitted the club was now at a crossroads regarding its footballing future.

He said: "What we do have to decide is where we want to go now. Do we want to be bumping along in Ryman Division 1 South? If we don’t go up this year, do we want to try to run away with it next year?

"If we do go up, do we want to establish ourselves as one of the top clubs in Kent in the Ryman Premier? To do that, we need more people.

"Anybody can come forward if they want to be a director or an associate director, to get more involved in how the club’s run.

"It is about money but you get an awful lot for it and we badly need it if we’re going to go forward.

"The whole ethos of the club has been to not rely on one single benefactor and to rely instead on a large number of people putting in comparatively small amounts of money that they can afford.

"That is where we are but now we have to take a step further by getting those people involved."

Read the full story in the Folkestone & Hythe Express.