It risks sounding like a cop-out, asking a football team and its viscerally passionate fanbase to accept a small-term loss as a long-term gain. Particularly when that small-term loss is not small at all, but rather an historic promotion into the top flight of one’s national football league to culminate an exhilarating, unprecedented and entirely unpredicted phoenix saga that began roughly seven years ago.
But that is how Andrew Howard, head of competitions at the Football Association of Wales (FAW), attempts to see what many domestic football fans have considered a travesty. A short-term loss, admittedly painful for Cymru South champions Llantwit Major AFC, who had their Tier 1 Licence application refused, subject to an appeal, will be denied historic promotion to the Cymru Premier.
A loss, he says, that will eventually reap a sustainable and ubiquitous long-term gain.
