It risks sounding like a cop-out, asking a football team and its viscerally passionate fanbase to accept a small-term loss as a long-term gain. Particularly when that small-term loss is not small at all, but rather an historic promotion into the top flight of one’s national football league to culminate an exhilarating, unprecedented and entirely unpredicted phoenix saga that began roughly seven years ago.
But that is how Andrew Howard, head of competitions at the Football Association of Wales (FAW), attempts to see what many domestic football fans have considered a travesty. A short-term loss, admittedly painful for Cymru South champions Llantwit Major AFC, who had their Tier 1 Licence application refused, subject to an appeal, will be denied historic promotion to the Cymru Premier.
A loss, he says, that will eventually reap a sustainable and ubiquitous long-term gain.
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“I appreciate every fan’s view that in a perfect world, if you win the league, you should be promoted,” Howard says. “But what is really important is that when a club does win the league or gets into the next league, they do have everything that will allow them to deliver to all of our stakeholders, whether you’re a supporter expecting a covered seat to watch the game in the miserable Welsh weather, or you are a broadcaster trying to produce a live television program for S4C on terrestrial TV for an hour and a half.
“Sometimes if something negative happens to a club, it can galvanise it, improve it and enhance it even more.”
Last month, the FAW released verdicts from the First Instance Body (FIB) on next year’s Uefa and FAW Tier 1 licensing applications. Fourteen of the 21 applications found success, including all 11 current JD Cymru Premier clubs, along with three Tier 2 clubs. Nine of the JD Cymru Premier clubs received Uefa licensing.
The topic of conversation, however, is the seven refused Tier 1 applications and the 66 per cent of Tier 2 clubs who applied for Tier 1 licensing were refused including Cymru South champions Llantwit Major and runners-up Pontypridd.
Clubs can appeal the decisions, and Llantwit have stated their appeal is well under way. An appeals board independent from the FAW is set to deliver any appeal decisions at the season’s end. However, if those appeals fail, rules stipulate no team from the southern division will earn promotion. Only Cefn Druids will face relegation with JD Cymru North champions Airbus UK Broughton moving up.
It will be the first time since the 2014-15 season (with exception to the Covid-cancelled 2021-22 season for Tier 2) that the Cymru Leagues will not have two promoted and two relegated teams. It is important to note that both deciding bodies operate outside the FAW.
Still, Llantwit Major’s refused application has rehashed myriad questions, not least whether Llantwit’s position is symptomatic of a flawed system that too often allows off-pitch issues to dictate on-pitch fates.
The Vale of Glamorgan club have swiftly become something of a loveable (albeit hateable as a rival) picaro, courtesy of their gleefully merciless social media presence and exceptional on-pitch performances. The club has risen from amateur divisions to potential Tier 2 promotion to punctuate seven daring years, featuring three consecutive promotions as champions and a manager by the guise of Bridgend Guardiola.
The feat is nothing short of remarkable. By their own admission, Llantwit never envisaged such a ride. However, their on-pitch triumphs might not reap due reward due to off-pitch criteria in infrastructure and personnel not being adequately met by FIB standards.
Reactions have been charged. Some fans have consequently rallied behind social media-barricades under banners such as “Pitch, not Paper” to voice displeasure. Others point to the fact that licensing parameters snuck up on no one.
Llantwit declined to use social media during their clash with Cambrian & Clydach on the Saturday immediately following the decision, calling their gambit “a small statement against football being settled anywhere else than on the pitch.”
Which beggars the question: Should it? Stuart Williams, ex-Llansawel player and Briton Ferry Llansawel board member, says some perspective is necessary before reaching such conclusions.
“People are moaning: ‘You have to have this. You have to have seats’. At the end of the day, who wants to be going to a park with no cover from rain, nowhere to sit, nowhere to have a cuppa? Little things like that add to the matchday experience,” Williams says.
“There is a lot of bitterness with people moaning, but I think they really know it is the right thing for Welsh football.”
Briton Ferry know a thing or two about being on the receiving end of licensing refusals. For five years, the club were denied Tier 1 licensing and only this season find themselves on the happier side. The efforts, though, were tactical. Upon reaching Tier 2, the club recognised the parameters they would need to exist within to, one day, attain Tier 1 status, and thus began phasing improvements incrementally.
“With us, each year, we made ground improvements with Welsh Government Improvement funds and set our targets for one big target every year because we know what it is when the season starts,” Williams says. “Whether you agree with it or not, until you have everything in place you aren’t going to get Tier 1 licensing.”
The verdict risks sounding harsh, not least deflating. There is nothing outright sexy about succession planning, particularly not when such planning rips away the possibility of pulling off an underdog story (‘Doing a Llantwit’, as some have come to call it).
Even Briton Ferry’s licensing triumph is bittersweet as even a third-place finish keeps them from doing anything more with their licensing than sustaining it for another year.
“We have had a lot of apologies from the managers and players,” Williams admits. “They feel like they have let us down to an extent because we have done our bit off the field but they haven’t done theirs on there. But at the end of the day we’re in this together. I would rather it be that way than the other way around and I’m failing them, not being able to go up.”
Still, Williams holds steady. Successful leagues are built on standards, he says. Poor off-pitch standards sabotage clubs’ on-pitch efforts. Supporters have expectations. No supporter wants to stand in the rain.
“And let’s face it. Making those improvements is slowly making Welsh football better. I don’t see any negatives with that really because every ground I go to, I can see something new all the time. That’s great.”
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The sentiment echoes that of Afan Lido FC volunteer and long-time Cymru Leagues fan Richard Taylor. Raise standards, raise the league. Simple, but frustrations are not without due cause. The recurring rate at which clubs are denied licensing annually is stark, he says, and the blatant lack of tier fluidity fails to sell the league. On-paper jeopardy exhilarates no one, not even the most domestic football evangelists.
“Promotion and relegation isn’t guaranteed year upon year,” Taylor says. “The issue is that we are finding it increasingly difficult to market the league and market our clubs to potential sponsors and potential financial backers when that fluidity between the two tiers can’t be guaranteed season in and season out.”
The claim is backed by numbers. Last season’s promotion/relegation battle was scrapped due to Covid-19 cancellations, but it only takes peering down to the season prior to spot a near-mirror scenario when Cymru North champions Prestatyn Town were twice denied the domestic Tier 1 licence on the premise of TV gantry inadequacies.
Prestatyn Town forfeited their promotion berth to runners-up Flint Town, despite winning the season by a whopping 16 points. The dearth of good-old fashioned jeopardy, says Richard, can unfairly hobble smaller clubs and subvert competition, thus diluting the product for spectators and sponsors and concurrently reaping a vicious cycle.
There’s also the more flagrant and long-running issue of money, and clubs not having nearly enough of it. According to Steve Jones, the FAW’s Club Licensing Manager, only one club in the Cymru Premier’s history has been awarded Tier 1 licensing on their first application attempt.
That club was Barry Town United, whose bid was aided considerably by Jenner Park’s already high-quality ground and academy, and manager Gavin Chesterfield’s pro-license status. The statistic paints a glaring portrait of the financial gulf dangerously percolating between Tier 1 and Tier 2. Floodlights cost. As do covered stands, flag poles, TV gantries, accessible car parks, properly-paid employees, medical teams, amongst other requirements.
Despite the growing on-pitch quality from Tier 2 clubs, off-pitch matters have not relished analogous success as clubs struggle to stump up the cash demanded. As former Burnley manager Sean Dyche’s mantra goes: relegation (or promotion) “usually ends up being about finance”.
Such disparities, many believe, undermine the league and shackle competition. “In terms of the FAW wanting to prove standards, improve infrastructure, improve facilities, it’s a good thing,” Taylor says. “But sadly we don’t have the system at the moment that is encouraged to support it. There are very few clubs that would be able to meet those requirements in order to achieve promotion on a regular basis.”
A generous injection of cash into the leagues is needed, a feat the FAW and new CEO Noel Mooney have taken aboard, but the Afan Lido man also points to the disconcerting paradox of a professional licensing structure largely being completed by volunteer-run clubs.
Briton Ferry’s five-year bid to raise the appropriate funds is held up by the FAW as a blueprint, but the work was owed strictly to volunteers, a backing that now reaches upwards of 120 according to Williams, with 40 volunteer coaches working in the academy.
“I think we have seen the world over that money in football is crucial,” Taylor says. “But you are relying on volunteers to complete this professional structure in their free time around their families, their jobs, their lives. It’s a very difficult process.”
That process falls under five key headlines: infrastructure (ground facilities including sufficient standards to host broadcasters); sporting (including five youth teams and licensed coaches); personnel and administration (medical teams, manager licensing); Legal (right to play at ground, constitutional set-ups); and financial (account audits must be supplied).
All five present varying elements integral to growing the overall quality of the game, says Howard, from increasing the league’s tactical and technical calibre to supplying supporters with experiences they deserve and want to return to.
Broadcast criteria have particularly ratcheted up licensing difficulty. The expanding coverage from S4C has exponentially increased exposure, which in turn increases revenue and sponsorship. But the cycle begins with meeting the broadcasters’ strict requirements in a covered TV gantry, presenting space and car park accessibility for OB trucks - requirements that do not come cheaply.
Clubs promoted from Tier 2 have access to a £100K pot budgeted by the FAW as well as up to £25K each for TV gantry requirements. Albeit in today’s inflated game, £50K will only feign to paper over many of the monetary demands, Howard concedes. Thus funding will most likely need to be self-generated.
Clubs that fail infrastructure criteria also have the alternative of ground sharing, though Howard understands committees might baulk at the option due to not being allowed commercial deals and forced to pay rent fees. Those at Llantwit also note ground sharing does little to feel like home.
Grace periods also come with caveats. The FIB and appeals body allow a facsimile of a grace period in the summer, but only if contract quotes and planning permissions for infrastructure are procured for start dates predating the season’s start.
“There has to be a date where clubs need to comply with something because if you give a date in the future there’s no guarantee it will get done,” Howard says.
“If we say you have two years to get your broadcast facilities up to scratch and our broadcast partner says we want to show the promoted club against the league champion on the opening day of the season, the TV slot is 7:30 on a Friday night and we have to say sorry we can’t deliver that but it will do in two years time - that’s no good for anyone. No good for them, for us, or the club.”
The same goes for academies and youth teams. Without operational facilities, clubs cannot access development funds per Uefa rules.
The criteria can feel exhaustively and unfairly granular for clubs who have climbed increasingly difficult heights to access Tier 1 promotion and rely heavily on volunteers and self-financed funds. Howard does not blame fans who begrudge the system, but he maintains that the demands are not in place to stymie clubs and confect a closed-shop affair, but rather reap wholesale rewards.
Do you think the criteria for clubs to be in the Cymru Premier is too strict? Have your say in the comments section here.
The fact Llantwit Major have pushed the boundaries on the pitch, he says, is testament to the league’s brimming potential. Now, it is about pushing the boundaries off it.
“We have a decent product in Tier 2 now. Our job is to work with the clubs to make it better and reduce that gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that Tier 2 is heading in the right direction, and Llantwit Major, if they do become champions, they will have done it on merit, and they have been a real success story.”
Admittedly, being a real success story and seeing that success story dreamily play out are two varying realities. However, those closest to Llantwit admit their defiant trip to the top will not be tarnished by off-pitch matters. Llantwit’s social media presence has already rallied significant sympathy for their cause, with the club reaching out on Twitter for sponsors and local businesses and setting up a crowdfunding campaign. Already, donations have poured.
Whatever the appeals result, Howards believes building a base of volunteers is vital to any aspiring club and hopes any sympathy garnered online is channelled into tangible support.
“If there are any disappointed clubs after the decisions, I hope their community, local sponsors and people around them really galvanise behind that,” he says. “That spirit generates more volunteers, more players, more kids coming in, spectators, commercial revenue. Because at the end of the day these clubs are the communities, and the community needs a strong football club, and hopefully in the face of adversity, some of these clubs can hit back stronger.”
