This weekend sees the SE Dons take another big step in their history as the club prepare to make their Emirates FA Cup debut.
Formed in 2014 in the south-east London suburbs, the club initially began as a Sunday League team in the Orpington and Bromley District Sunday League after being founded by owner Don Strapzy as a way to get his friends together to play football.
Ten years later, after building a steady stream of success on the pitch including some good runs in the FA Sunday Cup alongside building a large following off the pitch, the club progressed to take their first steps into the world of non-League football in 2024-25 following a merger with Forest Hill Park.
After their first season in non-League and some hard knocks along the way, they took that experience into last term which ended in a promotion to the Southern Counties East League Premier Division after play-off success.
Now, they will set out on their first adventure in the FA Cup, when they travel to Sussex to face Lancing in an extra preliminary round tie on Saturday.
"SE Dons began back in 2014 and if I'm totally honest, the vision of the club was to try and make sure we had eleven players on a Sunday,” admitted Strapzy, ahead of this weekend’s trip to the South Coast.
“It started out with my father, and my brother-in-law who is still playing today and the only one who is still playing now from the team in 2014.
“I lived across the road from a pitch in Mottingham and we just got our friends together one day and had a squad of about 16 for our first game - that was how it was born, SE Dons.
"It was a very typical Sunday League team, but we loved it and it was a way for me and all my friends to get together. I can’t say there was a vision or a plan, and we didn’t ever sit down and think we’d be in the FA Cup.
“We just wanted to be the best team in our league, and it kept climbing from there but our first vision was to get eleven boys playing together on a Sunday morning.”
The club’s output on YouTube and social media channels, charting their journey from the local leagues and into non-League and telling the stories of those involved, in recent years has brought them to wider attention for many.
And Strapzy takes up the story on how their profile has grown organically, something which was far from in the plans when they first got together to form the team 12 years ago.
“It’s been an outstanding journey, and we started filming our content back in 2017.
“I made music at the time, I was a rapper would you believe, and I needed a way to interact with my audience so I said to my friend Kris to come and film our games on a Sunday, because there’s always something interesting going on.
“What made people really fall in love with the club was the family feel, and my mother was a really big part of the club as our kit lady and really our first supporter along with my niece and dad.
“The big thing for us was when my mum passed away in 2018, because she’d been very prevalent on the camera and we won our first cup final about three weeks after she passed away. That really gave it deeper meaning and was part of the growth of SE Dons. A lot of people can relate to us and our journey
“We had 700 people come to that cup final and that was a big thing for us, we actually had supporters. We’re just trying our best, hoping to inspire people and we’ve got nothing to lose.”
As the team now turn their attention to what will be a historic date in the club’s history, what would a young Don Strapzy have said back in 2014 if he was asked about the prospect of his newly-formed team playing in the world’s original knockout competition?
“I can’t fathom it,” he responds.
“Me and my dad, who’s also passed away now, used to talk about it because he’s from Manchester so we’d get carried away with things and say ‘just imagine if we got in the FA Cup and drew Manchester United away’
“I love football because of my dad, and I used to watch the FA Cup with my dad and now we’re in the FA Cup, I can’t quite believe it.
“This is the first SE Dons team to play in the FA Cup, so I just want to see them enjoy it, go out there to win and see if we can keep the dream alive.
“So we’re just going to enjoy it, and see how far we go and then we go again next year and try again.
“The ultimate aim is round three and Manchester United away, or Millwall as the local team in south London. It’s the luck of the draw and you never know!”
