County visit Nuneaton Town on Saturday in a 3pm kick-off and, ahead of this Vanarama National League North tie, County Tweet-meister Gareth Evans has put together five factoids on Nuneaton for you.
- 1. Need to bounce back Saturday! Can I be the first to say we’ll have the Nuns on the run?
You may – although you will probably be the first and last to do so… and our hosts this weekend won’t thank you for it! Nuneaton’s ground-sharing rugby union counterparts at Liberty Way – or the LDJ Solicitors Stadium, if you will (no legal pun intended) – are the ‘Nuns’, while the outfit we shall be facing are known as ‘Boro’.
- 2. Hang on – I thought they were Nuneaton Town, rather than Borough, these days?
Formally, they are – at least for now, courtesy of the Football Association’s insistence that, following Nuneaton Borough’s liquidation in 2008, a planned successor club should take a different name. But supporters still hark back to the era, spanning over 70 years, when ‘Boro’ became a force to reckoned with in the Birmingham League and the Southern League, and, subsequently, former members of both the Conference (or the Alliance Premier, as was) and the Conference North.
With me so far? Well, things could have altered again this time next year, as Nuneaton – having over the summer conducted a name-change poll among fans over that produced a whopping 464-12 majority-vote in favour of the old Borough moniker – will shortly lodge an application with the FA to re-assume, with effect from 2018/19, the title that the club previously held. It would not be the first time that it had gone from being Town to Borough, either – as an earlier version of the club, originally founded in 1889 by parishioners of a local church as Nuneaton St Nicolas, played under the Nuneaton Town name between 1894 and 1937 in various leagues around Warwickshire and the wider Midlands, ahead of being wound up and reformed as Nuneaton Borough.
- 3. Got it… I think. So, how have things been going for the new club these last nine years?
Not too bad, when you consider that coming into being as a technically fresh entity in 2008 – making Nuneaton the youngest club currently in the National League North – carried with it a two-division demotion to the second tier of the Southern League. Back-to-back promotions followed, returning Town by 2010 to the (then) Blue Square Bet North that Borough had left – and, between 2012 and 2015, ‘Boro’ were plying their trade at non-league’s top level, before dropping back down a couple of years ago to where they are today. They have also lifted some silverware in their latest incarnation – winning the Birmingham Senior Cup for 2010. This success, together with seven victories in earlier BSC finals as Borough and, prior to that, another as Town ‘Mark One, means that Nuneaton’s name has appeared on the trophy during every decade since the 1930s and more than any other team except Aston Villa.
- 4. What about players who have turned out for both County and any of the Nuneatons?
The first is believed to have been George Warren, a forward whose brief tour of duty at Edgeley Park in 1911 was sandwiched between two at Nuneaton, and prior to his untimely death in First World War service six years later. More recently, another striker, Danny Glover (at County in 2015), played there during 2011/12, while the following season saw our current acting captain Stephen O’Halloran in action at Liberty Way, immediately before joining us under Ian Bogie for his first spell as a Hatter.
The most famous individual to have worn the shirt of each club was George Best, who played three games for County in 1975 and Nuneaton Borough eight years later – scoring once for the latter from the penalty spot in a friendly against Coventry City.
- 5. I know they’re not really the ‘Nuns’ – but have to ask if you’ll be breaking your usual… erm, habit of not betting!
I am certainly tempted – given that, quite extraordinarily, our four meetings over the last two seasons have ended one-all. But County have also never won, in three attempts, at Liberty Way. And that, to my mind, will be much more of a habit worth having broken, come 5pm on Saturday!
