History
The only English club playing in the Welsh Premier, Oswestry Town had a chequered history.
Founder members of the Football Association of Wales in 1876, a rare achievement for an English club, Oswestry went into decline despite winning the Cheshire League in 1972. They also competed in the Northern Premier League and they also reached the FA Cup 1st round on several occasions. Oswestry were forced to sell their Victoria Road ground to pay their debts and the club folded completely in the late 1980s.
The re-formed club opted for Welsh football and played in the Cymru Alliance or the Welsh Premier from 1995/6 until 2003. After being initially refused entry to the LoW on ground criteria, Oswestry moved to the Park Hall athletics stadium and considerable improvements were carried out to reach Welsh Premier standards, although the ground had a long way to go to meet the modern standards of the Welsh Premier.
The club remained financially weak, and on 7 June 2003, it was announced that the club would merge with Total Network Solutions, from Llansantffraid, eight miles away, with the aim of playing at a new stadium in Oswestry from 2005/06. The Football Association of Wales approved the merger, but on 12 August 2003 the European governing body, UEFA, ruled against the merger on the grounds that the two clubs were in different countries. On appeal two days later UEFA reversed its decision having reviewed the history of the development of football in England and Wales, and particularly noting Oswestry's role in the founding of the F.A.W. and regular participation in the Welsh Cup from 1877 to the present. Consequently Oswestry Town was excused from completing its fixture at the start of the 2003/04 season on 16 August. This signalled the end of the club after 143 years.
The merger agreement provided that the merged team would be known as "Total Network Solutions" and will play half its matches in Oswestry Town's dark blue strip. In 2006, after the club sponsor Total Network Solutions was taken over by British Telecom, Total Network Solutions renamed themselves The New Saints while maintaining their prior colour scheme, including the use of Oswestry Town's colours on the road.
Read more about this topic: Oswestry Town F.C.
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)