FC Oswestry Town’s grand plans no more after final game

For many grassroots clubs the lockdown was a terrifying prospect. For some, like FC Oswestry Town, it was terminal.

The non-league football club announced last weekend it had made the ‘extremely sad and difficult decision’ to withdraw from the North West Counties Football League and fold.

In 2013, a pocket of committed individuals formed the club, to replace the folded Oswestry Lions, to play in the amateur Mercian Regional Football League Premier Division and, more importantly, keep the Oswestry name in football.

They could hardly have hoped to recreate the success of Oswestry Town who, in their heyday in the 1970s, competed in the Southern and Northern Leagues, a stellar standard of football.

Almost 5,000 once crammed into Victoria Road to watch a Welsh Cup semi-final against Wrexham in 1971. They were managed by Dave Pountney, Alan Boswell and the legendary Arthur Rowley.

Oswestry Town, who folded in 1988 before reforming and eventually merging with Total Network Solutions in 2003 to become The New Saints in 2006, reached the FA Cup first round on four occasions, pitting themselves against Doncaster, Southend and Bournemouth.

But the committee hoped to push FC Oswestry Town through the lower levels of non-league. Chairman Ian Jones says the aim was to bring FA Cup football back to Oswestry, the third largest town in Shropshire.

They were on track. Despite average home crowds of just 50 or so at Park Hall, where they were tenants of The New Saints, FC Oswestry were set to win promotion from the NWCFL First Division South to step five football under Matt Burton and then Nathan Leonard last season. There was a healthy 13-point buffer between themselves in second and fourth (four promotion places were on offer due to a reshuffling of the non-league pyramid), having lost just six of 30 league games.

And then, in March, the global pandemic bit. FC Oswestry were to have no idea that a 2-0 cup semi-final defeat to AFC Liverpool on March 14 would be their final game. By the end of the month, the FA had declared all seasons below the National League null and void.

“Obviously we were in a good position to get promotion and it’s just been left in limbo, the football club and the situation,” recalled Jones. “We’re not bankrupt or anything like that, by no means, we’re just not in a financial position to maintain the challenge that we have. That’s basically it.”

“He (Leonard) did a great job. He got the team just where we wanted it. We had a good balance of youth and experience.

“Obviously it was null and void and left in limbo. We weren’t sure what steps to take. He wanted to get prepared even though there was no season to be prepared for.”

The committee were unable to host their annual golf day in May, which raises a pot for the club to use come pre-season.

Exactly a month ago Leonard, son of former Shrewsbury defender Carleton, tendered his resignation as manager.

Jones insisted that the closure of The Venue, the entertainment company that operated out of the town’s Park Hall, had absolutely no bearing on FC Oswestry’s decision to fold.

The FA took significant backlash for its immediate decision to null and void non-league seasons.

“It’s not all just down to the FA,” Jones said. “You plan with a certain amount of money in a season. We had the benefit of players on loan from TNS. We had quite a good relationship there but the Covid disrupted it. I’m not going to blame the FA, but it didn’t make the situation any easier.

“The only thing the FA should have done is finish the placings on points-per-game.”

He added: “I talked to the committee. Although it’s been quite enjoyable over the last few years in the North West Counties, because it’s an unbelievable set-up and a great standard, it still wears you down.

“It’s an expensive game to compete. The officials are the best part of £150 to start.

“One of the biggest problems, taking Covid out of it, if you look at social media people are crying out for a football team even though they’ve got TNS who play Champions League football.

“But we would only get on average 50 people. If you were to get 100, 150 or 200 people it totally puts a different spin on things. We wouldn’t be having these conversations then, probably.”

“Getting sponsors has been quite difficult as well, with the current climate how can you market your football team when you don’t know when the league is starting and there’s a shortage of money in some areas? It’s just been really difficult.

“On the other side of the coin Whitchurch have done very well, six years ago were in the same league as us with half-a-dozen watching now get 200-plus watching.

“They’ve done a fantastic job. That’s the blueprint. Their town is smaller than Oswestry but they still get people through the gate.

“One of our biggest aims was to get a ground in the town. There are no football pitches inside the Oswestry town centre, that’s something the local council should be looking at, a facility for the people of Oswestry from youth football up to adult football.”