Darren Royle was at Wembley when Mark Hughes broke Oldham Athletic hearts in 1994, scoring a 120th-minute equaliser in an FA Cup semi-final. That day Royle’s legendary father, Joe, was in the dugout with the club at their peak in the Premier League but within weeks they had their Cup dreams dashed in the replay and were relegated.
That started a first steady and recently drastic decline for the club but 31 years later they are back at Wembley, where on Sunday they face Southend, another club that have come back from the brink, with a return to the Football League at stake and Royle watching on as the club’s chief executive. The past three decades have seen Oldham drop down the divisions, culminating in relegation to non-league in 2022, against a backdrop of financial problems and protests against the then owner, the deeply unpopular Abdallah Lemsagam.
