All football clubs experience relative highs and lows throughout their history; seasons to remember, others to forget. But not all clubs manage to squeeze in such a wide range of emotions into one decade alone. The case of Newport County in the 1980s is a journey from hero to absolute zero.
May 1980 would have been a wonderful time for anyone associated with the Newport County. Managed by Len Ashurst, the club achieved promotion to Division Three, and by winning the Welsh Cup gained entry to the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
Heady days. With the likes of Keith Oakes, Kevin Moore, John Relish, Steve Lowndes, Nigel Vaughan, John Aldridge, Tommy Tynan, and Dave Gwyther, the team achieved a solid mid-table finish in Division Three. But it would be their European exploits that the season would be remembered.
A run to the quarter finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup was thrilling, and although it ended in heart breaking fashion at Somerton Park on a night of ill-fortune, the club had created memories that would last forevermore.
Colin Addison returned for a second spell in charge in February 1982, a manager who had previously overseen the Great Escape of 1976/77, as the club hung on to their League status by winning their last five matches. Now, Newport County had loftier ambitions.
A glance at the Division Three table in April 1983 indicates just how close promotion was. Yet a poor return of just four points from the last 21 available saw Newport miss out, and from this point on the fortunes of the club started to decline.
Even during times of success on the pitch, Newport played a risky game. Investing relatively big sums in players such as Alan Waddle (£80,000) and Mark Kendall (£45,000), wages also increased alarmingly, leaving the club in a precarious position.
Needing gates of 5,000 to break even, Newport’s average attendances did not manage to hit this mark at any point during their time in Division Three. A change in rules, scrapping away clubs rights to any gate receipts also hit the club hard.
Players such as Aldridge and Tynan were sold in an attempt to balance the books, but by 1985 the club reported losses of £185,000, and the situation was spiralling out of control. When the Football Association of Wales turned down Newport’s plea of a £100,000 handout, the writing was on the wall.
In desperate need of a knight in shining armour, an American arrived on the scene in 1986 named Jerry Sherman. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Declaring his intentions to buy the club for £750,000, Sherman kicked off his involvement with the first of many empty promises.
“He told me once that he had £20 million,” Nick Grey of the South Wales Argus revealed in this Week In Week Out documentary in 1989. The programme, discussing the period when the club went out of business, does not paint Sherman in a very good light.
Supporters of Newport County talk of a hated figure, a non-entity, and a man only at the club to boost his image. How they must have come to regret the fact that Sherman was drawn to the club by the fact that he came from Newport, Washington.
The messy financial situation soon rolled on to the pitch. Addison left at the end of the 1984/85 season, replaced by Bobby Smith, but by March 1986 he was gone. Fortunately former player Relish was able to rescue the club from the drop.
Pushing against the tide for so long, the wall began to crack, before a disastrous 1986/87 saw everything come tumbling down. Relegated to Division Four after winning just eight matches, the club also lost the Welsh Cup final to Merthyr Tydfil.
In truth, managers Jimmy Mullen and John Lewis didn’t really stand a chance. By 1987, the club were forced to sell Somerton Park to the Council; Sherman to the very end declaring his goal of building a new stadium modelled on the Houston Astrodome.
The team won six league matches under three managers during an abysmal 1987/88, losing 33, as Robbie Taylor finished top scorer with just four goals. With average attendances now down to 1,759, and relegation to the GM Vauxhall Conference an inevitability, the club was on the brink of extinction.
Striker Paul Sugrue detailed the confusion and turmoil enveloping the club. “Everything looked right but it didn’t feel right,” Sugrue revealed. Staying in nice hotels, and eating nice meals, the club was seemingly carrying on as usual.
But four of Sugrue’s pay cheques bounced, and the club couldn’t even afford to pay their YTS players £29 a week, even though they would get the money back from the government. Sherman continued to talk a good game, but his time as chairman from November 1988 quickly turned into a car crash.
Bottom of the Conference, and with debts of £126,000, the club was issued with a winding up order, and by the time of the court case in February 1989, Newport were £330,000 in the red. Officially wound up by the High Court on February 27, Sherman ensured a long and drawn out death.
Appealing for more time to find money, Newport had three matches postponed before given a final deadline by the Conference. The end was sad; Enfield turned up at Somerton Park with Conference Secretary Peter Hunter in tow, but greeted by just two supporters, and the match officials, there was no option but to postpone the match and expel Newport County.
Hunter expressed his disappointment. “I would have thought someone at Newport would have had the courtesy to be there. The whole affair has been a shambles. Jerry Sherman repeatedly told us that there was money available to save the club, but he never produced it.”
Despite the financial crisis, the club had continued to operate on a full-time basis, and their wage bill of £30,000 was reportedly more than five times higher than any other Conference team. Again Sherman asked for yet more time, but patience had run out.
An auction was held raising £12,000, the highest fee of £360 paid for a trophy given to the club by Cup Winners’ Cup quarter final opponents Carl Zeiss Jena. A sign above the manager’s door went for £40; appropriately, some black armbands were sold for £1.74.
There was a happy ending. Out of the ashes of the old club, AFC Newport formed in June 1989, winning the Hellenic League on the long road back. Playing in Gloucestershire for three of the next five seasons, eventually Newport County returned to Wales.
Fortunately, Jerry Sherman was nowhere to be seen. Sentenced to a seven year sentence for fraud in 2007, those who remember his time at Newport were possibly not too sympathetic. Of course he wasn’t solely to blame for the financial mess at the club. But he did little to help matters.
Newport County played their last Division Four match on May 7, 1988, against Rochdale. On May 5, 2013, their supporters celebrated at Wembley as the club regained Football League status. Some fans may have been present at both matches. 25-years of hurt, never stopped them dreaming.
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