Cray Valley: Capacity increased to 1,500 for Charlton FA Cup replay
- Published
Wednesday's FA Cup first-round replay between Cray Valley and Charlton will be shown live on BBC Two
Cray Valley Paper Mills have been granted an increased capacity of 1,500 for their televised FA Cup first-round replay with Charlton Athletic.
The eighth-tier club drew 1-1 with the Addicks, who are five divisions above.
The Isthmian League South East Division side usually host around 200 fans and their Badgers Sports Ground in Eltham has a capacity of 1,000.
"It's quite a bit higher than we were expecting to be fair," Frank May, the club's chairman, said.
"The local authority [Greenwich council] have been down to have a measure up and a count up and are happy.
"We got wind that it may be on TV a couple of days ago but leading up to that we still had to get the stadium ready to cope with as many supporters as we can get in.
"Obviously we can't accommodate the whole of the 2,000 that supported us on Sunday (at Charlton) but we will try to get as many in as we can."
Speaking to the BBC Radio London sport show, May said the difficulties of hosting their League One opponents, and near neighbours, were immediately apparent as soon as the draw was secured.
Promotion for the club would not be possible at the moment due to their stadium not meeting the criteria, but they hope the revenue and exposure from this tie can kick start their expansion and improvement plans.
'We are rushing around like headless chickens'
FA Cup highlights: Charlton 1-1 Cray Valley Paper Mills
Sunday's game at The Valley saw Cray Valley fall behind in the ninth minute before an own goal shortly after the break drew them level.
"Since Sunday we have been receiving messages from people all around the world saying how unlucky we were not to win it the first time and wishing us luck for the replay," May added.
"We are very grateful for that level of support but we need people through the gates on regular Saturdays.
"We need people to watch these two games thinking 'Cray Valley aren't a bad football club - let's go and watch them'.
"When Charlton are away, or their other local team, then perhaps they'll nip down to Cray Valley.
"The money we are receiving from these fixtures on TV will all be ploughed back into the stadium and, if this happens again, we will be a bit more clued up and ready for it.
"At the moment we are not and we are having to rush around like headless chickens.
"Our ultimate aim is promotion and the ground is not even ready for the next level so there's a hell of a lot of work to do."