The full interview can be found at: https://www.spreaker.com/show/sounds-of-the-sea. The interview has been serialised in The Journal. In our final episode, Dave talks about his aspirations for the future of Radstock Town.

I think there’s absolutely no doubt that the FA have it in their mind to make the Western League ‘Western’, to bring the Hellenic League further West. I think there’s a slight gap around the north of Wiltshire and across into Berkshire, but it’s very thinly populated and football has always been played in populated areas. It’s the only way clubs can survive, they need people coming through the gate, they need people using the social club. So, it’s pretty pointless some of the clubs even playing at a higher level if they’ve only got one person dipping in their pocket to pay the expenses.

I mean, the Western League was the Bristol and District League all those years ago and its boundaries were a thirty-mile radius around Bristol. So, to say the Western League is focussed on the West is possibly doing a disservice to the league that has grown organically over the years and has attracted teams into its competition because of the standard of football that was being played.

What concerns me at the moment is the way the FA are just making arbitrary decisions on boundaries and not considering playing strength or ability to fund football at the levels that clubs are at whilst placing more demands on their finances by asking for floodlights and stands and everything else that are under-used and under-occupied.

I think the FA needs to take a serious look at the way football is constructed from top to bottom and start paying some genuine respect to the environment and stop asking us to switch floodlights on every two minutes, stop asking us to travel hundreds of miles every week.

It’s a different world now, in terms of important points, to what it was one hundred years ago. But the principles are still the same; a football club is bigger than a football league is bigger than an FA. We all exist because of one another. It’s important that all the powers that be start realising that what’s good for the clubs is good for the leagues, is good for the FA. If we keep juggling situations, then I think we’re going to be faced with losing clubs rather than clubs making progress through systems.

From Radstock Town’s perspective, we’re in a fairly easy position; we get promoted, we play in the Hellenic League. We play in the Western League where we go off to Cornwall four or five times, I mean they have to come to us a lot more times than we’ve got to go to them. We could equally go in the Wessex League and have probably less travelling in both divisions, because for us, you know, a hop down to Southampton or to Portsmouth is easy. So, Radstock are slightly unique, if you like, Welton is much the same, I suppose. But we’re in a slightly different position to some of the clubs who are desperate not to travel. Why are they desperate not to travel? They probably haven’t got the money to hire coaches. I mean, Radstock haven’t got a lot of money, but you know, we’ve got enough to play as a club. So, the aspirations of football, the aspirations of Radstock Town, all the progress but we’ve all got to pull together and make sure we’re doing it all for the right reasons. By doing that, we’re allowing people to stay in the game and not forcing them out of the game because they cannot afford it.

If anyone has any information, photographs, old programmes, newspaper articles or medals concerning the history of Radstock Town Football Club, then Dave would like to hear from you, as he continues to compile the Clubs history. Dave can be contacted at: [email protected].

Thank you to Ian Nockolds for his continued support of The Journal sports pages, and to Dave Wilkinson for your contributions and knowledge of Radstock Town Football Club.

Editor