As the crowd gather at Champion Hill before a 7.45pm kick-off against Harrow Borough, opinions on the future of Dulwich Hamlet are divided. “It’s a bit worrying but if everyone is sensible there’s no reason why it can’t go on,” says Martin Hopkins, who has been watching the team since “they used to get a crowd of 100”.

“I don’t think the club will be here in six months – it’s a cashflow issue and going out of the FA Trophy didn’t help,” counters Toby Lovatt, though he admits: “There’s always a fatalism to being a fan, especially in English football.”

Martha Wright used to live near the ground and has come back with friends for this match. “Everyone sees the value of having the club in the community,” she says. “I believe it will survive because people are still singing 30 minutes after the match has ended.”

In the final count, 1,200 people were in attendance for Dulwich’s Bostik Premier League fixture on Tuesday. Their team won 2-0, with second-half goals from Marc Weatherstone and an Ash Carew penalty, but the non-league football was really of secondary importance. What was occurring at the side of a huge Sainsbury’s in south-east London was part protest, part fundraiser, part show of solidarity. Dulwich, a club who have created a vibrant identity for themselves around progressive values and avant-garde messaging, are currently a pawn in a dispute between a land developer and a local council. If a successful resolution is not found in short order the club, soon approaching their 125th birthday, may well go out of business.

The basic premise of this story is a familiar one. The idea that land in the capital is more valuable when a football stadium is replaced by apartment blocks inspired everything from the ongoing controversy at Millwall to Wimbledon’s departure from Plough Lane 26 years ago. Dulwich are only the latest to join the club, but while each story has its own complexities, theirs is particularly thorny.

Three years ago the Champion Hill site was bought by a land developer called Hadley, with funds from a New York‑based investment group called Meadow (later Meadow assumed full ownership). The deal did not include the club, which is still owned by a man called Nick McCormack, but the purchaser did take over their running.

In March 2016 Hadley and Meadow applied to Southwark council to turn Champion Hill into housing. At the same time, they proposed to build a stadium on an adjacent site and transfer ownership to the club’s supporters’ trust. The proposal was rejected by the council on the grounds that it did not provide sufficient affordable housing. So began a dispute between Meadow and Southwark that this month finally saw the developer end its financial support of the club, which it said was running a loss of £170,000 a year.

It is in this light that the sale of raffle tickets, pink-and-blue cupcakes (Dulwich club colours) and copious amounts of craft beer during the Harrow match should be understood. Since Meadow pulled out, a fans’ alliance between the supporters’ trust, Dulwich’s football board and a grassroots fundraising group called 12th Man has stepped in to run matchday services at Champion Hill.

Each home fixture is now a crucial opportunity to raise money to keep the club afloat, but the fans say they do not know how much they need to make. They say they cannot accurately establish the club’s running costs, numbers which are in Meadow’s possession (Meadow, for its part, says it has made sufficient information available and the alliance has not been proactive in confirming it).

In one final twist, the fans are allowed to make money from Champion Hill only in the six hours around matchday. For the rest of the week the ground is the property of a stadium operator. A stadium operator owned by Meadow.

The immediate situation appears chaotic and desperate, but a solution remains possible. Meadow’s actions may yet be a negotiating tactic, and the council has made assurances that the club will not be allowed to perish. It is understood that the two parties are in dialogue and have met in the past week, with further meetings planned.

Alex Crane of the supporters’ trust remains optimistic. “It’s the fanbase that gives us most hope,” he says. “Attendances have rocketed and it’s not just fans but volunteers, which is exactly what you need in a supporter-run club. The last week has been terrific. In the short term we have to ensure we can still function. In the long term, I’m very confident that with the support that we have, we can make this work successfully.”

Dulwich being Dulwich, some are sanguine about even the worst eventualities. Robert Vaughn is a Champion Hill ultra and member of the club’s situationist wing The Comfast Chapter. He is wearing a Dulwich scarf over a leopard-print coat and the technicolor shirt of Streatham Rovers, a fictional team that exists only on Twitter. “The club is in three times as much debt since the buyout and there’s a concern that all the heroic attempts at fund-raising might just go into a black hole,” he says. “I’m for the community interest rather than the capitalist. If the legal entity goes under it might be a matter of going down two tiers, but then the club could be fan-owned. Perhaps being a phoenix club wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

Additional reporting by James Caroll