For a non-league side the profile of London club Dulwich Hamlet is simply astonishing.
The National League South side are considered the ‘hipster’s choice’, mainly for being at the forefront of ground-breaking radical changes and instigations relatively absent in the top tiers of the professional game.
With one of their infamous slogans is “Ordinary morality is for ordinary football clubs”, as reported by The Guardian in the past the club has played a ground-breaking friendly against Stonewall FC, an LGBT rights charity, and ‘regularly organise community activism such as supporting a food bank and a campaign to pay cinema workers the living wage’. Brilliant we must say.
The team however, which is 125 years old, have hit the headlines for more comical reasons this week after an incident during a much-need fundraising game between the Hamlet and Crystal Palace during the international break.
In the midst of the action, an announcement came over the tannoy to say that a car was blocking an emergency exit and needed to be moved immediately. Nothing unusual about that you might say, but it ended up that the perpetrator in question was Dulwich Hamlet’s keeper Preston Edwards.
Reacting after the third caution, the moment of realisation appeared on Edwards’ face, looking visibly dumbstruck towards the crowd and indicated that it was his vehicle.
‘That’s my car!’ he reportedly bellowed.
A kind-hearted member of the home crowd sprinted out of stands and eventually went out to move the car to avoid it being towed.
Unfortunately no footage is available of the shot-stopper frantically fumbling for his keys to throw into the stands.
Taking to social media the goalkeeper said after the game:
‘I[sic] wasn’t a wind-up. The first two times I ignored it. The third time they mentioned it getting towed. That’s when I panicked!’
And explaining why he had let himself get into the situation in the first place Edwards said
‘Running late and saw no spaces’.
Unfortunately for the goalkeeper, he shipped in five goals in a 5-0 thrashing by the Premier League side.
Flicking through his Twitter handle, Edwards’ film taste seems to be as questionable as his performance and parking skills:
‘VENOM - very decent film.’
Currently Dulwich Hamlet sit precariously three places over the relegation zone but are turning their season around by suffering just one loss in their past five matches.