Welsh FA “dont give a toss” about grassroots football

That’s the verdict of FC Nomads devastated club Chairman Bernie Attridge after the Football Association of Wales confirmed the club will not gain promotion to the Cymru Alliance League despite winning the Welsh National Premier League.

It’s been a meteoric rise for Wepre Park based FC Nomads from Clwyd League Division 2 champions in 2010 to Welsh National League Premier Division Champions 2016, just one league down from the Welsh Premier league.

The pace of success for FC Nomad’s has left the club struggling to develop it’s ground to the standard required for Cymru Alliance.

FC Nomads had agreed a 12 month ground share with neighbouring Welsh Premier League outfit Airbus UK Broughton at their 1600 capacity Hollingsworth Group Stadium while the Wepre park ground is brought up the standard.

The ground share application was however rejected by the Welsh FA due to a technicality, despite a deadline of April 30th for clubs to have relevant paperwork in place in order to enter the Cymru Alliance, applications to ground share needed to be submitted by April 1st, a full month before FC Nomad’s had even won the league.

F.C Nomads Acting Chairman Bernie Attridge has been left fuming by the Welsh FA’s decision, he said:

“I have put my life into this club to get us where we are today. I had a 12 month deal secured at Airbus UK to ground share for 12 Months whilst we brought Wepre Park up to standard.

“All this time I have been working to a 30th April deadline to enter the Cymru Alliance and have the relevant paper work in place only to find out on 10th April that the ground share applications had to be in on 1st April, although we didn’t know at that time if we had won the League or not.”

Bernie continued:

“I have fought to the bitter end to try and overturn a technicality but it has fell on deaf ears. The constitution of F.C Nomads was to play at the highest level, we have achieved this but we are being denied on a technicality that is hard to swallow. We have not had one ounce of help or support from CA or the FAW.

“The FAW contribution has been shallow and their contribution has been to take the appeal money off us without a full hearing for me to put our case over. I even had Welsh Government members taking the matter up on the clubs behalf but they have also hit a brick wall. So we won’t be promoted as Champions this year.”