CHIPPENHAM Town are daring to dream that they will be able to bring their long wait to reach the promised land of the National League to an end this season.

The Bluebirds are currently top of the Southern League Premier Division – a division they have plied their trade in since 2002 – with just over seven weeks of the season to go, and are one of the favourites to clinch the title and promotion to National League South.

Chairman Neil Blackmore has revealed that Chippenham’s Hardenhuish Park home has already undergone informal inspections to ascertain how much work would need to be done to satisfy the requirements set out by Grade B of the FA’s National Ground Grading system.

Whilst keen to keep his feet on the ground, Blackmore admits that his team’s sparkling form, which includes a current 17-match unbeaten run, makes that far from easy.

“Results have been really good, gate numbers are up and we seem to have a lot more travelling fans as well,” said the Bluebirds chairman.

“There are still nine games to go and 30 points for some teams, so we’re not getting carried away and we’re trying to take every game as it comes.

“Our aim is to try and get promoted, and when I first joined the board, I said that it would be a huge thing for the club and a huge thing for the town to have a National League side.

“We’re the longest-serving team in this division. We’ve never been promoted or demoted.

“We’ve had a guy from the league come to look at what we’d need for the next ground grading.

“All we need is six turnstiles – we’ve got five – and a physio room for the opposition to use that’s not attached to the home dressing room, and that’s it, so that’s work that we’re going to get done in the summer.

“We’re also trying to raise the funds to build a new modular building to replace our portacabins, so there’s a lot that we’re trying to do.”

A rare poor season saw Chippenham finish 22nd in the table in the 2003-04 season and miss out on being one of the eight teams lifted to step two of the National League system – the then newly-formed Conference South.

The Bluebirds have been beaten in three play-off finals – most recently in the 2009-10 campaign, when they lost 2-1 to Nuneaton Town – and were also knocked out in the semi-finals in 2007-08.