Amongst the thanks and best wishes to departing players this close season, there are four who will take their place in club history as winners of a league title – only the fifth such group who can lay claim to that honour.
They are, of course, Rakish Bingham, Greg Cundle, Luke O’Neill and Dominic Poleon. All of them passed the 100-game mark for the club, scored crucial goals along the way and to a man have been wonderful servants of this football club.
Both Bingham and Cundle joined the club on trial in the summer of 2020 while the country was deep in lockdown and Fleet fans had to get used to their new squad through a TV, tablet or phone screen. Cundle, the mysterious ‘Trialist G’, scored a hat-trick against Punjab United in his first friendly outing while Bingham struck the winning penalty in an FA Cup shootout against Hastings United on his debut and followed that up with a brace in the first league game.
Those goals were the first of 55 scored by Bingham in his five years and 157 appearances for the club, figures that would no doubt have climbed even higher were it not for the Achilles injury he suffered at Slough Town in 2023 and another setback just a few months into his recovery last summer. Top scorer in his debut season with the Fleet, Bingham soon rose into the Top 20 of all-time Fleet goalscorers, passing the likes of Matt Godden to sit in 16th place in that particular list – and some of his most memorable goals included the winner at Havant & Waterlooville, the opener in the promotion final at Dorking, another goal at Meadowbank in the 4-1 win there last season and the clincher against FC Halifax Town in the FA Cup First Round.
Cundle wasn’t short of a goal or two either – his club statistics reached 113 games and 20 goals, while his numerous assists from a wide attacking position were plentiful as well. He scored 12 goals in our title-winning season and he had the happy knack of often plundering a goal in tight games to give the Fleet the crucial breakthrough in matches.
The most recent member of the 100 Club at the Fleet, Luke O’Neill was a summer 2022 signing as Dennis Kutrieb sought to use the promotion-final disappointment to build an even more formidable squad. Right-sided O’Neill fit the bill perfectly with plenty of EFL experience and became one of the Fleet’s most prolific goalscoring defenders, eventually reaching 11 goals in 104 appearances. Like Cundle, he too added plenty of assists to his goals tally and became the team captain this season on the appointment of Josh Wright to the manager’s job.
O’Neill’s first strike for the club was a memorable winner at Eastbourne when 10-man Fleet came from behind with an outfield player in goal to take the three points and another highlight from his showreel was the deft flick at Rochdale to send the team to a win on our return to the National League in 2023.
And, finally, it’s farewell also to one of non-league’s deadliest strikers of the 2020s and certainly Fleet’s most prolific frontman of the century as Dom Poleon ends his four-year association with the club. Signed towards the end of the abortive 2020/21 campaign, Poleon finished with the club Golden Boot in 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24, picking up the same award for the National League South and the division’s player of the year as well. He won a raft of further player of the year awards with the Fleet in that season, too, as well as picking up the club’s goal of the season.
His goals tally of 81 in 169 appearances propelled him to eighth place in the Fleet’s all-time goalscorer list and although that phenomenal rate of scoring means there are too many goals to mention here, his hat-trick against Oxford City to seal the National South title are just three that will live long in the club’s collective memory. His partnership with his friend and teammate Bingham was one that will be talked about at the Fleet for years to come.
It goes without saying that our departing players will always have a place to call home at the Kuflink Stadium and are welcome to join the many ex-players who we enjoy greeting as old friends year after year. Good luck to them all for the future and our most heartfelt thanks goes with you.
