Cray Valley Paper Mills manager Steve McKimm must briefly excuse himself from this interview while he picks up some customers waiting for his taxi at the rank.
There, perfectly outlined, is the novelty of Wednesday’s FA Cup first-round replay between his eighth-tier side and League One Charlton Athletic.
After their 1-1 draw at the Valley on November 5, McKimm and Cray Valley have a second chance to secure the biggest giant-killing in FA Cup history, with 115 places between the two clubs in the football pyramid.
The game will be broadcast live on BBC Two and around 1,500 spectators will cram into Badgers Sports Ground in Eltham, which hosts about 150 people for most games.
“To have Charlton Athletic come to our ground is something to go in our history books”, McKimm says with pride, his passengers safely delivered to their destination.
And what is particularly enticing about this fixture is that it reduces the term ‘local rivals’ to its purest form.
“There are more divisions between the two clubs than there are miles”, says Cray Valley chairman Frank May.
McKimm adds: “Some people laughed when we got a coach from our ground to Charlton’s, but we wanted the players to turn up like professional footballers.”
One great challenge ahead of the biggest home game in the Isthmian South East Division side’s history is their limited resources.
Charlton’s website was used to sell Cray Valley’s away tickets for the first match, while fencing has been installed to segregate the home and away fans for the replay.
McKimm says: “I’ve seen a lot of things on social media about having it somewhere else to let more fans in. But we want it at our ground because it’s our ground. Someone joked that Charlton will be playing in our beer garden. Yeah, but it’s our beer garden.”
May, who spoke to local authorities to expand the ground’s capacity, says: “The amount of interest in the replay has been just astronomical. We’re not equipped to play at this level, that’s for sure!
“The income we’re receiving we’re hoping to reinvest in the stadium, for when these games come around again.
“I haven’t totted up the total money, but there was £50,000 from the first game on TV, £15,000 in prize money from the FA. The winner of this one gets another £41,000 in prize money.”
Cray Valley had to play eight matches to get to this stage - more than the eventual winners of the FA Cup will.
They were 1-0 down to ninth-tier Lordswood in their very first match, but have since knocked out seventh-tier Carshalton Athletic and Enfield Town.
“I read Jack Grealish talking about Manchester City having a togetherness that can’t be broken”, says McKimm. “At this moment in time, maybe because of the run we’re on, we’ve got that.
“I appreciated [Charlton manager] Michael Appleton giving us some credit and saying we deserve our second chance.
Appleton said this week: “We’ll be as humble and respectful as we possibly can, but at the same time we’ll be ruthless. We’re expected to win the game.”
Right-back Barney Williams, a Millwall-supporting CCTV engineer, says: “The moment a game starts, I get so engrossed in the game. Sometimes I’ll even forget what the score is because I’m so concentrated on my job.
“If we do beat Charlton, why couldn’t we beat Gillingham [in the second round] as well? That’s the best thing about the FA Cup. Anything can happen, and it makes people at our level believe.”
