No fear.
The togetherness at Wythenshawe Town Football Club is obvious. Management, chairman, fans. Everyone seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet. This small non-league club in the shadow of Manchester United and Manchester City are on the way up. As they stare down the barrel of one of the biggest matches in the club’s history on Saturday, with the prospect of a trip to the pinnacle of English football, Wembley Stadium, tantalisingly close, the message is clear and resolute. There will be no fear.
After entering the FA Vase in the first qualifying round, being drawn away from home in all but one of the eight ties, winning three of them on penalty shoot-outs and knocking out the favourites to win the whole thing - Consett, who knocked them out in heartbreaking circumstances two years ago - there isn’t much else for Wythenshawe to be scared of.
Town will be on their travels once again on Saturday as they take on Loughborough in the quarter-finals and are just two victories away from the final and the chance to win one of non-league football’s most prestigious prizes.
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“Excited,” manager James Kinsey tells the Manchester Evening News when asked how the club is feeling ahead of the match. “We're not one bit anxious about it. We're relishing the opportunity.
“Some of our players have experienced it before but some haven't. It's an experience that I haven't encountered before but we're excited. We just want to go and make a good account of ourselves.
“At this stage, we're playing a good side but they're also going to be playing a good side, they won't want to play Wythenshawe Town. We want to go and give it a good go we know we're close to the pinnacle but we've just got to take it one game at a time. We're very grounded we're going to keep working hard and hopefully, we can keep pushing and go all the way.
“We fear absolutely nobody."
Wythenshawe are a club on the up. Formed in 1946, they spent most of their history in local Manchester and Chesire amateur leagues before ambitions turned towards becoming a semi-professional club and entering non-league. That aim was completed in 2018 after a second season in the Cheshire Premier League ended in promotion to Step 6 and the North West Counties.
After solidifying themselves at a much higher level, Wythenshawe then looked likely to earn another promotion before the Covid-19 pandemic threw non-league football into turmoil. The season was ended prematurely, as was the next one, but the two part-campaigns were then fused together and a final table was decided on a points-per-game basis. As a result, Town were promoted to the Premier Division.
Now they're looking to escape that and with four games of the league season remaining, they are just four points off the play-off place. With such excitement and possibilities on multiple fronts, Chairman Chris Eaton has seen a steady growth of fans at the club.
"Definitely, particularly away from home," he replied when asked by the MEN if there had been a noticeable increase in attendances this year. "It's all relative at this level. If you're getting crowds of 250-300 at home you're doing okay and we're certainly doing that but away from home you hardly see an away supporter most of the time yet we're getting 40s and 50s which doesn't sound a lot but it might be if the home crowd is only 150.
"On Saturday we've got well over 100 on the coaches and I've been told others are making their own way down there so we could have 130-140 there and they'll make a din, they'll make a difference. I think in the last round Loughborough got about 600 so 150 out of 700-800 is still decent. This will be the 7th tie away from home out of eight so we've not had a lot of luck in the draw and we're certainly doing it the hard way but I just think bring it on. It's very exciting."
One of the fans making the trip down Leicestershire will be 32-year-old Ian Crompton, an accountant from Wythenshawe, who popped by his local club every now and then before getting hooked in 2019. While the pandemic curtailed that somewhat for a time, it was only enforced further when non-league clubs became the only access to live competitive football.
"I found a hard-core, but a fundamentally decent group of regulars who welcomed me as one of them, and it now feels like a family," he says. "I'm a regular now, home and away, and have been since football came back. I don't ever see that changing.
"Absolutely," he added when asked if he's going to Saturday's quarter-final. "It’s a massive game for the club. We’ve already exceeded expectations, having been drawn away in most rounds and having knocked out the favourites. We go into this game without fear ad probably expecting to win, which really shows where we are at currently.
"There is a real sense that something is building. There are more young fans at games, and more people like myself who are disillusioned with the top tier of football and its treatment of fans as consumers. The club is really tapping into that with affordable but fantastic football.
"It feels we are riding the crest of a wave and we are loving the ride. With a great young manager and an involved chairman, this club can achieve big things."
As everyone at the club seems astutely aware, Wythenshawe has a massive catchment area of potential supporters. Whereas league leaders Macclesfield have a catchment of just 25,000 and Premier League side Burnley have 88,000, Wythenshawe has around 110,000. If only one per cent of the town's population attended games then there would be massive gates of 1,100.
Attracting fans in Greater Manchester is no easy task though. Not only do you have giants United and City on your doorstep but big clubs further down the Football League as well as a whole litany of non-league sides all in the same county. But with only neighbours Wythenshawe Amateurs immediately close by, exciting times attracting more fans and charity work increasing the club's presence in the community, Town are growing. The possibilities are thrilling.
"Everything's right, it's well capitalised by the four of us that own it," Eaton adds. "Everything's going really well on the pitch and we've got such a huge fanbase to go after. We've only been in non-league football since 2018 so we're definitely on that journey up. We keep doing what we're doing on and off the pitch and we really do see a fantastic journey ahead for Wythenshawe Town," Eaton adds. "Hopefully, a stop on the way is Wembley Stadium."
Unless you're Chelsea or Manchester City fans where the trip to the national stadium is an annual tradition at this point, getting to Wembley is the dream for pretty much every other club and supporter in the country. It's rare, it's momentous, it's special. Even if you witness your team get humiliated there, the trip itself will last long in the memory. For non-league clubs, it's a remote possibility only made possible by the FA Vase and FA Trophy. It's a far-flung pipe dream but when the dream starts to become reality it feels like nothing else. Getting to the famous stadium would be a moment like no other for Wythenshawe Town.
Crompton says: "It would be massive. Wythenshawe Town have come a long way in a short space of time, so to reach Wembley so early in our growth would be massive. It could also keep the club running for years and potentially entice the next generation of supporters to visit their local club on a Saturday afternoon."
A trip to Wembley leading to an explosion in the club's fan base and all the benefits that would entail, not to mention the prize money on offer, is a thought echoed by both Eaton and Kinsey. But what would it mean to them personally?
At just 29, Kinsey is one of the youngest managers in the game after moving into coaching at an early age as a case of Chondromalacia - or 'runner's knee' - limited his playing options. Thankfully, he took a liking to coaching and, despite being turned down for plenty of jobs due to his age, was handed a chance by Wythenshawe which he has grasped with both hands.
"Huge," he says. "Obviously for myself, I'm only 29, the final is actually on my 30th birthday, May 22, so that would be decent if we can get there on that day but I'm just more for the club.
"I'd love to give them [the fans] a day out and an experience of following their local club, not just City or United or whoever else, and it's very very realistic that we could do that. Second favourites now with the bookies and we fancy ourselves more than anyone, we think we're the best side still left in it. We just have to take it one game at a time and what will be will be. If we go to Wembley then brilliant, if not we've had a great run and a great experience.
"If we can get there I don't want to just to take part I want to go all the way and win it. We'll see how we go. We know we've got a tough game coming up and if we win that we will have another tough one before it but it's hard not to dream about it at this point. There's no denying that."
Eaton can't hide his exuberance just thinking of the possibility and even though he has represented England in martial arts, getting Wythenshawe to Wembley would easily rank as his best sporting accomplishment. " It would be the achievement probably of my life in sport," he explains.
"I was involved in martial arts for a long time and I've competed for England, refereed at world level and all sorts but this would top it. It really would. How many non-league football clubs will ever, ever get to Wembley? Ever? That's the significance of it. It would be the biggest thing in my life in sport, without question."
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