A Look Into Histories

A LOOK INTO HISTORY TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR

Llansantffraid F.C.

The club that we now know as the New Saints FC was formed as Llansantffraid F.C. to represent the border village of Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain (population: 1,000) in 1959, and played at the Recreation Ground.

They first tasted competitive football in the Montgomeryshire Amateur Football League, winning the championship seven times. At the end of the 1989–90 season they were elected to the Central Wales League but their stay was brief, winning promotion to the Cymru Alliance as runners-up on their first attempt. Llansantffraid's meteoric rise continued and in 1992–93 they gained promotion to the League of Wales, now the Cymru Premier, as champions and won the Welsh Intermediate Cup (formerly the Welsh Amateur Cup).

Our Match Programme, 50p effort was for a League of Wales fixture with Newtown on 17th April 1995 and showed our side to be mid-table with Bangor City running away with the title. All the information that fans needed was in the weighted tome showing what local companies thought of the team by their sponsorships. Last weeks Results page, League table and League scene and Editorial were followed by a welcome page on Newtown and the fascinating fact that the club played in the first ever Welsh Cup tie losing to Druids of Ruabon on 13th October 1877 ! The line-ups were on the middle spread than Reserves and What the Paper said. A Complete League and Cup results and line-ups page with every league result and a Memory Page just showed how this village side packe it all into thei Programme and were intent on going places and that is exactly what happened ….

In 1996, Llansantffraid won the Welsh Cup and qualified for the first time for the European Cup Winners' Cup. At this time, a local computer company, Total Network incorporated the company name into the club name. They have qualified for European competitions several times. The club's European home games were generally played at either Newtown's or Wrexham's stadium, as their old Recreation Ground was far below UEFA's standards To comply with UEFA's regulations on third-party sponsorship, the club were known by their initialism TNS by the European governing body in their competitions.

In 1997 the club's name was changed to Total Network Solutions F.C., being the first instance in the United Kingdom of a football club renaming itself after its sponsor's name only. In the summer of 2003, the shareholders of Oswestry Town met to approve a merger with TNS. The financially weaker club was a close neighbour to TNS, and also played in the League of Wales despite being based across the border in Shropshire.