Three days before the National League South side Worthing face Morecambe of League Two in the first round of the FA Cup, builders are putting the finishing touches to the main entrance of the club’s Woodside Road stadium. Nestled in a suburban neighbourhood of the west Sussex seaside town, the Rebels have enjoyed a rapid rise up the non-league pyramid and on Saturday will officially open their new North Stand that takes the capacity to 4,000.
For the owner, George Dowell, who was paralysed from the chest down in a car crash when he was 17, days after being named on the bench for Worthing’s first team, it will be a particularly proud moment. “It’s going to be amazing to see it,” he says. “We’re starting to get that ‘North Stand, give us a wave’ chant so the atmosphere is going all around the ground these days.”
There has been some transformation from the era when barely 200 spectators would attend matches. In 2015, at the age of 22, Dowell became one of the youngest owners in English football when he used some of the compensation money he received from his accident to buy his local club and he has overseen two promotions. A documentary, The club that George built, that was made available for streaming on Discovery Plus and TNT Sports at the start of October and followed Worthing last season as they came within a whisker of being promoted to the fifth tier for the first time, has helped raise the profile of the club. Attendances are averaging about 1,500.
“A lot more people know about the club these days,” Dowell says. “Hopefully if we keep playing well then people will want to keep coming back.”
Dowell could never have imagined this would have been possible when he was in hospital for three months after the accident. Unable to move and coming to the realisation that he would never play football again, there appeared to be no light at the end of the tunnel. “I didn’t know anyone with a disability so it was really hard to gauge what this means in terms of what I can and can’t do,” he says. “I didn’t really hold out much hope at the time.”
The turning point came when he was recovering at Salisbury district hospital’s spinal treatment centre and a former tree surgeon who had also been paralysed visited some of the patients.
“They would come and share their lived experiences,” Dowell says. “I remember this one guy and he had a really cool car and that was something I thought I would never be able to have. When I saw that, it made me think: ‘I can do that.’ It gave me hope to see that he was out doing his own thing and enjoying his life. So I thought: ‘OK, there is plenty you can still go out and achieve.’ You need something to cling on to, to give you an image of what life can be like.”
Football not only provided him with hope but eventually a career. Dowell spent 10 months in hospital in total and one of the first new skills he learned there was how to play Football Manager on his computer. He spent hours playing as Manchester United or teams from National League South because Worthing were not included given their lowly status at the time. “It was a very proud moment when we were promoted and we were officially on the game,” he says, though Dowell admits he has yet to take control on Football Manager of the club he now owns: “It takes so much time – you have to really commit to it. But back then it was my release from everything.”
Dowell remembers finding the transition to being in a wheelchair very difficult. “I would really struggle going out or going to new places because I was worried that it wouldn’t be accessible and there would be a big fuss when I got there,” he says. “I wasn’t very comfortable in my own skin so I ended up staying at home a lot.”
That changed when he and a group of former teammates formed their own club – Worthing Borough – in the lowest level of the West Sussex league, with Dowell as the manager. It was a decision that changed his life. “It really helped because it forced me to get back out of the house. When you’re going to these matches with 16 of your mates it just made me feel less worried about the fact that it might not be accessible because they will get me in there anyway.”
Dowell achieved successive promotions but was unable to find training facilities and came up with a plan to build a community football hub in the town when he read in the local newspaper about Worthing’s financial struggles. “I always had in my mind that I wanted to make a career for myself and not just sit at home going crazy,” he says. “So when this opportunity came up I had the money set aside and it was like: ‘Wow, I can build a career and save my local club at the same time.’”
Worthing haven’t looked back and have finished fourth and third since being promoted to National League South in 2022 – their highest league placings. Their success has come despite having what Dowell, who was awarded an MBE last year, describes as a “mid-table” budget. Their 3G pitch is rented out to local clubs to cover some of the running costs.
“There is this myth that I spend all my money on the club,” Dowell says. “For the first two or three years, I had to put money in but just like with any business when you’re starting, you have to invest. Now it’s fully sustainable and that is down to the good work of the board.”
Dowell prides himself on the pathway Worthing have created to the first team after he introduced youth teams at various age groups. Brad Dolaghan joined West Ham in the summer after scoring six goals in five games during their run to the playoff final last season, the latest in a long line of youth team graduates to have made it to the first team. “If you have young local lads coming through the team then everyone is so much more patient with them,” says Dowell. “Because we’ve had so many players who have moved up the pyramid it really helps with the next batch of recruitment because they see what is possible.”
He adds: “Getting to the Football League is the long-term ambition. There’s not that many pro clubs around us so the catchment area is pretty big and Worthing has a bigger population than people think. So there’s no reason why we couldn’t sustain it.”
Worthing have made a solid start under their new manager, Chris Agutter, and Dowell is relishing the opportunity to reach the second round of the FA Cup for only the second time in the club’s history having missed last year’s defeat by Alfreton at this stage to attend the birth of his daughter, Bonnie.
“I watched it on a live stream in the hospital so it will be good to be there this time,” he says. “Morecambe are on a really bad run so it’s winnable. One thing we haven’t really managed to do since I came here is put in a really strong Cup run together so it would be amazing if we can get through. Like the documentary, it would bring a whole new set of eyes to the club.”
