Support Sittingbourne Football Club or lose it forever.

That’s the stark reality according to secretary John Pitts.

With crowd numbers dwindling and costs rising, The Brickies are struggling to make ends meet.

In a desperate bid to save the club Mr Pitts is urging residents up their support.

He said: “On the field it’s going well, but off the field we’re struggling. I don’t see a future for the club the way that it is at the minute.

“We’ve lost about 100 supporters over the last year and maybe 200 to 300 over the last five years. There’s a lot of new people in Sittingbourne who don’t event know we have a senior football club here. We’ve posted thousands of leaflets on the new housing estates but nothing.

“The figures haven’t added up for the last few years really. We have semi-professional players whose wages are anywhere between £1,000 and £1,500 a week and we have to pay that to stay at our level in the league or we face dropping down.

“Then we pay about £17,000 a year for rent, £1,000 a month for electricity and it doesn’t stop there. I think you’re looking at a total of about £170,000 a year to run the club which is a lot of money.”

He believes the only way the club, based at Central Park on the Eurolink industrial estate, can survive is if a multimillionaire steps in as chairman and ploughs money into the club.

The first team is currently in the top half of the Ryman League Division One South.

Mr Pitts added: “To be secure we’d need a new chairman who can put in a lot of money. To be fair, the current chairman Andy Spice who owns BW May builders, has invested thousands of pounds over the years but he can’t keep doing it, we have to stand on our own two feet.

“Andy announced at Christmas he was stepping down as chairman and there were discussions that this could be our last season but I don’t think it will be. It’s all talk until something happens.”

He said: “I thought it would be a good idea if I stepped down to get some new blood in - I’m not running away, but nobody has stepped up to the plate yet and yeah it would be nice if a millionaire took over.

“At the end of the day if people don’t support us, the club will go.

“We did free entry before Christmas and we got a lot more people than we normally would. We asked for donations and got just as much money as if we charged the normal prices but you can’t do that all the time.

“I think where the grounds are has a lot to do with it. People have to either get a taxi or walk as there’s no bus service and if someone drives it means they can’t have a drink, but there’s nowhere else for us to go with the facilities we need such as lighting, changing rooms, parking turn stalls etc.”