Wrexham dominate most of the Welsh football headlines these days, but it’s TNS who’ve been making history in the Conference League – FFT headed to Shrewsbury to see them record a shock ‘home’ win over Astana
a gaggle of 60-odd Kazakhstani football fans mingling in Shrewsbury town centre on a Thursday afternoon is a rare sight. In fact, it had never happened before and will, in all probability, never occur again. But for one night, a UEFA Conference League night that will be forever remembered by Cymru Premier side The New Saints as an historic one, Astana fans occupied a small Shropshire town a few miles from the Anglo-Welsh border. Even in defeat, the visitors waved their national flag with pride.
FOLLOWING IN DIEGO’S FOOTSTEPS On matchday, head coach Craig Harrison is among the first to arrive at Park Hall stadium in Oswestry, the home of TNS. Kick-off in Shrewsbury, just along the A5, is still six hours away. “It’s the worst bit of matchday,” he tells FFT. “You just want the game to start. There’s a lot of hanging around, a lot of dead time.”
In one corner of the players’ dining room/social club bar, a trio of analysts are huddled around laptops. Harrison’s remaining staff chat nervously, some even expending energy via a kickabout. This evening, TNS will host their first ever European group stage match. For more than two decades, the club have unsuccessfully attempted to navigate the qualifying rounds of UEFA’s various competitions – notable defeats came to Manchester City in the UEFA Cup at the Millennium Stadium in
2003, then to holders Liverpool in a Champions League qualifier at Wrexham after the Miracle of Istanbul. Now, owner Mike Harris’ dream will finally be realised. Passage was not straightforward. As reigning Welsh champions, TNS began their European quest in the Champions League, defeating Montenegrins FK Decic before Ferencvaros swept them aside. A narrow 1-0 aggregate loss to Moldova’s Petrocub Hincesti meant the Europa League was quickly done and dusted. There was one last avenue in the Conference League: a comfortable play-off round win over Lithuania’s FK Panevezys ensured their progression to the league phase.
Other Welsh clubs have enjoyed their own famous continental nights. Elderly Cardiff fans will forever recall a 1-0 win against Real Madrid in the 1970-71 Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-finals at Ninian Park, having qualified by lifting the Welsh Cup, while Wrexham dumped Porto out of the same competition 13 years later. Newport County reached the last eight in 1981 and, more recently, Swansea notched a 3-0 Europa League triumph at Valencia’s Mestalla – albeit in their case, qualifying by winning England’s League Cup at Wembley.
TNS are the first team from the Welsh league to compete in the group stage of a mainstream UEFA competition,topping the Intertoto Cup exploits of Ton Pentre, Conwy United and Ebbw Vale.
That TNS achieved it under Harrison is no big surprise. A promising left-back for Middlesbrough and then Crystal Palace, the Gateshead native retired in his mid20s after suffering a horrific double leg break in a Palace reserve game. He was finished with football. Until, that is, the band booked to play at his 30th birthday party cancelled at short notice. The late replacement act was a group fronted by Gareth Owen, then manager of Airbus UK Broughton, who struck up a chat that led to Harrison becoming his assistant at the north Wales club, based five miles outside of Chester.
That was early 2008. By the summer, Harrison had taken over. His next move? December 2011, when he went to work for Harris and develop the ‘TNS way’. “
One of the main reasons I got the job was because Airbus played really good football,” Harrison tells FFT. “It was part of my ethos, and that went hand in hand with Mike. He wants to win, but he also wants his teams to play entertaining, free-flowing football.”
The Harris-Harrison combination has borne fruit. TNS won six straight crowns before Harrison left for National League Hartlepool in 2017. He returned in 2022 and TNS have since claimed two further titles to make it 11 in just 13 campaigns. Last term they went unbeaten, winning all but two of their 32 games, averaging over 3.5 goals per match and finishing a staggering 33 points clear at the top.
Resources help, of course. TNS are the league’s only full-time professionals and Harrison’s budget for staff and players is circa £1.2 million – he estimates it to be about three times that of most rivals. Success has, naturally, bred resentment. “It’s a really weird British thing – people get a kick out of putting others down,” explains Harrison.
European nights present an altogether different test to domestic dominance – six days prior to Astana’s visit, TNS had shellacked Llangollen Town 16-0 in this season’s Welsh Cup. “It’s very tough to flip, to go from being a free-flowing side and scoring a hatful of goals, to having to fully focus on defending,” continues Harrison. “They’re two totally different disciplines, and there’s been hardly any time to get on the training pitch – from the beginning of October to Christmas, we have a game every 68 hours.”
Suddenly, the table shudders with the vibration of Harrison’s phone. It’s Harris, who’s been hosting the obligatory UEFA lunch. “They’ve left their 11 for Sunday at home,” the owner declares excitedly.
The Kazakhstan Premier League title race is now entering its final throes, and Astana can’t afford to drop a point if they want to top their runners-up spot from last term. They previously reached the Champions League group stage in 2015, beating Manchester United 2-1 in the Europa League four years later. Harrison and his staff stay wary – they’ll wait for the team-sheet to drop before believing they’re facing a weakened side.
A few weeks earlier, TNS had kicked off their league stage campaign with a trip to Fiorentina – Conference League finalists in each of the past two seasons. For more than an hour they held firm at Stadio Artemio Franchi, only to fall to a 2-0 defeat. It was, scoreline aside, an occasion to savour. “Ten minutes before the game started, I realised where I was and thought about previous managers who’d sat in the dugout and the players who’d been in the away dressing room,” enthuses Harrison. “The great Milan teams and guys like Diego Maradona – I managed to give myself five minutes to take everything in.” “ANYONE FOR BOWLING?” At 4pm, the Park Hall car park steadily fills up. Soon the room is brimming with football chatter and clattering cutlery. As the players finish their pre-match fayre, assistant coach Chris Seargeant calls a five-minute warning. Plates are returned and the squad shuffles past a kids’ soft play area and into an analysis hub, set up in a partitioned corridor next to an unused bowling alley.
While logistics denied Harrison’s staff the chance to visit Kazakhstan, they’ve trawled painstakingly through the video footage and the players are given a final insight into what to expect. The caveat? According to Harris, the line-up may not be quite as expected. Then it’s onto a coach. TNS hosted their qualifiers at Park Hall but the ground falls short of UEFA requirements for league stage fixtures, so a 17-mile hop to Shrewsbury’s New Meadow is required. It’s where they’ll also face Swedish side Djurgarden and Greek giants Panathinaikos. Luckily, TNS are dab hands at finding a home away from home. The club is an amalgamation of two other teams: Total Network Solutions and Oswestry Town. Harris’ involvement first began when his computer networking company started sponsoring village-based Llansantffraid FC in the mid-90s. Why? “Because they asked,” he tells FFT, smiling. “I had my company’s name on the shirts for one season. They asked me again and I said, ‘No, but if you change the team’s name, that’s a different conversation’. I never expected that to happen, but a couple of hours later they called back.”
And so, in ’97, Total Network Solutions came to exist – a new name for a club that had surprisingly lifted the Welsh Cup as Llansantffraid a year earlier. In 2003, English outfit Oswestry were in financial strife. Harris stepped in, saved them and folded them into the club. Three years later, British Telecom bought his business and the team were christened The New Saints, retaining the TNS acronym with a little nod to Llansantffraid’s nickname: ‘The Saints’.
Soon after, the club made the 10-mile move over the border from Llansantffraid to Oswestry. Having initially been told they could no longer participate in the Welsh football pyramid after relocating to England, Harris highlighted during the appeal that Oswestry Town had, in fact, been founder members of the Football Association of Wales in 1876.
This evening, the squad arrive at New Meadow at 6.35pm sharp. “It couldn’t be 6.30pm – it had to be 6.35pm,” says a chuckling Harrison. “We have a match itinerary and it’s literally by the minute.” Goalkeeper Connor Roberts is first out to warm up. These occasions have extra meaning for him – unlike Harrison, he was unable to fully soak in the Florence trip. “I lost my old man to mental health only 18 months ago,” he explains to FFT. “I must have cried eight times during the game. I felt my eyes welling up. I’d look up to the sky as if to say, ‘Listen, just get me through this’. When the final whistle went, I was gone, completely gone. Craig and I had a moment, and I said, ‘This is getting harder for me’.”
Roberts’ eyes are watering. He admits candidly that, but for his therapist Nick, “I might not be here doing this interview with you.” His hope is that speaking out about his pain nudges someone to seek help for theirs.
Until his passing, Roberts’ father had been a constant source of support during the years where making it to the top was “always that arm’s distance away.” Released by Everton, the shot-stopper signed for Cheltenham as number two, earning call-ups to the Wales Under-21 side, then the senior squad. “We played England U21s twice and I did OK twice,” says Roberts. “Then I went away with the seniors to Holland. I thought, ‘Yeah, something’s finally happening for me – I’ve got my break’. But I couldn’t find a club after that. I ended up signing for Chester on £100 a week.”
To boost his income, Roberts worked as a teaching assistant, joining Bangor City in 2015. Three seasons on, he departed for TNS, a decade after spending a week at Park Hall on work experience. “I was cleaning glasses behind the bar, but my first ever goalkeeper coach, Mark Morris, saw me watching the first team train,” continues Roberts. He shouted, ‘Connor, do you fancy training?’ I spent the week not doing a lot of work really!” Even after joining TNS, Roberts was an understudy initially. Now, he’s firmly established as first choice. “
WE WANT TO REACH THE QUARTER-FINALS
” With kick-off nearing, green and whiteclad supporters file diligently through the turnstiles. Temporary club shops have been set up inside the concourses for those lacking colours, and they bristle with activity.
TNS hardly has a huge following, their average league crowds hovering around 200, but there’s no absence of passion among the small, hardcore band of fans. Mike and Jen have been TNS fans since the merger, having previously followed Oswestry Town. “I think we’ve missed four home games since 2007,” reveals Mike. He was an Oswestry director, first attending a match in the early 1950s. “My mother used to say that I’d been to every Birmingham league ground by the age of five,” he says, eyes twinkling. “The last time I came here, an Oswestry lad was playing for Sheffield Wednesday, but this really is a night out.”
Christine and Sarah have volunteered as TNS stewards for more than 15 years, but tonight they’re not working – Harris has sorted them tickets and a night off. Christine first watched TNS back in 2000. “They played a friendly against Wrexham and then faced Chelsea – I took my son along and have watched ever since,” she says. “I’m absolutely amazed we’re here. I still can’t quite believe it. To see our name in the Conference League is hard to get used to.”
Half an hour before play begins, Harris and Harrison share a warm embrace in the hospitality lounge. The latter then heads downstairs to complete his final preparations and the owner takes part in a Q&A. He’s on after TNS’ record scorer Greg Draper – the pair reminisce about a 9-1 victory over Bangor City a decade ago. Harris hid in the toilets that night to avoid abusive home fans.
The owner has clearly enjoyed a tipple over his lunch and wears a perma-smile. These are the evenings he’s poured time, energy and money into. He thanks Shrewsbury for their warm hospitality, revealing that a three-hour drive down to Cardiff was the alternative. ‘T-T-TNS’ he bellows to close.
Once the match kicks off, in front of a crowd of 2,202, Roberts is beaten by the opening strike but the woodwork rescues him. Soon he needs iron-wrists to deny Stanislav Basmanov. The locals sense a long night.
But TNS grow into the contest, and Roberts’ next meaningful involvement helps the hosts to break the deadlock. Josh Daniels’ fizzed backpass draws a gasp and the ball bounces awkwardly near Roberts. A few hours earlier, he had confidently told FFT that he started out as a striker. Just in his head, or for real? “I wasn’t bad, you know,” he chuckled. The consummate ease with which he turns a potentially hazardous pass into a first-time, perfectly-cushioned one-two suggests he was being truthful. Within seconds, the ball goes from one end to the other and Rory Holden remarkably heads TNS in front.
Astana again hit the frame of the goal just shy of the hour mark, via a fingertip from Roberts, and 12 minutes from time the Welsh champions secure a landmark 2-0 victory. Declan McManus has already missed four decent chances, but makes no mistake from the penalty spot after a handball. On the final whistle, Harrison hugs Seargeant, then swivels to catch Harris’ eye. This result, this moment, has been aeons in the making: 88 European games and, at last, three points
Harris continues to lead the chanting. The players celebrate in the centre of the pitch before finding their families on the sidelines. Roberts turns away to hide the tears he’s fighting as he holds his fiveyear-old daughter tight. After the defeat to Fiorentina on matchday one, Roberts met his goalkeeping hero David de Gea, who now plays for the Viola. A photo of the pair, Roberts clutching his opposite number’s shirt, is his WhatsApp profile picture. This, however, tops that easily.
Noticeable among those singing in the Shrewsbury stands is the amount of kids in TNS tracksuits. The youth teams are very important to Harris, and five of the 25-man Conference League squad are academy graduates.
“We’ve been around the academy for five years,” says Neil Bradshaw, who’s here with his son Michael and his son’s mate Ben. They call goalscorer McManus over for a selfie. “Having this opportunity, given to us by Mike who provided free tickets for the academy, makes you feel part of a bigger club.
“At the end, the boys were both looking across the pitch. They’ve been to bigger grounds, but nights like this make their dreams achievable. They’re peering out at guys who’ve gone through the same system and are now winning matches in Europe – for a plucky club on the Welsh border, that’s unbelievably special.”
The result has wider ramifications, too. The poor performance of Cymru Premier sides in Europe in recent years has meant that the country’s four European spots will be reduced to just three next term. TNS beating Astana ensures that Wales claim enough UEFA ranking points to guarantee that four teams will be able to compete again in 2026. Little wonder, then, that Wrexham, Swansea and Cardiff are all believed to be keen on future Welsh League Cup participation, if the competition’s winners earn one of Wales’ European spots. TNS also pocket €400,000 for this Astana triumph.
When FFT reconvenes with Harris the next day, he’s enjoying “what I think is called hair of the dog”. “Most neutrals thought we’d end up with nil points and a couple of good hidings – and we still might get a good hiding from somebody, that’s football,” he concedes. “But we’ve proved that TNS are a proper football team, we play good football and we’ve got very, very good players.
“We haven’t finished yet, though – not until we pick up one of those cups. That’s not such a crazy idea, is it? Twenty-five years ago, people said I must be mad claiming we’d win our domestic league. We’ve done that, and now we’ve got into a European group stage. We want to reach the last 16, then the quarter-finals – the dream never ends.” For a long time, the club’s fame came via Jeff Stelling’s immortal Soccer Saturday caper, “they’ll be dancing in the streets of Total Network Solutions this evening”. After an historic victory over Astana, 2,000 giddy souls certainly stepped into Shropshire’s night air doing a merry jig. Meanwhile, the crestfallen Kazakhstani support were just beginning their 3,000- mile journey home..
Shrewsbury isn’t the only English ground to host European football without staging top-tier action. In 1998, Irish police didn’t fancy the idea of Rangers travelling to Dublin to face Shelbourne in a UEFA Cup qualifier, so the fixture was transferred to Tranmere’s Prenton Park after Liverpool and Everton both declined to offer their services. Twenty one years earlier, crowd disturbances during Manchester United’s Cup Winners’ Cup first leg at Saint-Etienne saw the Red Devils banned from playing the return within 200 miles of Old Trafford. A crowd of 30,000 still turned up at Home Park in Plymouth (above) – insert jokes here about it actually being a lot closer for most United fans.
