Andrew Warshaw on what relegation might mean for Enfield Town FC as National League South season reaches a climax

Enfield Town FC are England's oldest fan-owned club — Enfield Town FC are England’s oldest fan-owned club

Can Enfield Town pull off a second successive miraculous escape from relegation, against all the odds?

Lightning rarely strikes twice and, after an agonising defeat to Chesham this week, Town’s hopes of retaining their National League South status were hanging by a thread.

With the 2025/26 league campaign concluding on Saturday, 25^th April, the borough’s leading club are likely to need all the help they can get to prevent them spiralling back down into step three of the non-league pyramid.

While they have undoubtedly been given a lift by the unexpected return of fans’ favourite Jake Cass – who now lives predominantly in Dubai but has come out of retirement until the end of the season – manager Gavin Macpherson has stressed numerous times how much stronger this division is compared to last year when the club ensured their survival on a dramatic final day of the campaign.

Throw into the mix the fact that more and more clubs in National League South are becoming full-time and that fan-owned teams are inevitably disadvantaged when it comes to financial resources, and you get some idea of how Town have been punching above their weight.

But is it all about to end, and where do the club go if the worst comes to the worst and they are relegated back into the Isthmian League?

Much has been made on various fans’ forums in recent weeks about the need to change the constitution for the club to advance, scrapping or at least moderating the fan-owned ethos and allowing for significant majority ownership. But any future sugar daddy would want a return on their money – certainly not a guarantee.

Plus, critically, any prospective new owner would have to have a proper vision for the future, a fact not lost on those who remember what happened to the old club which folded under highly contentious circumstances a generation ago.

“Obviously we would love to stay up, as the professionalism is so much better and it would eclipse anything we did last season,” Town vice-chairman Paul Millington told the Dispatch. “It would also mean we could tap into crucial additional funding, which we wouldn’t get at step three.

“But if we do get relegated, the silver lining is that we have the facilities to go straight back up again. We’ve tasted this level once and I’m sure that we could challenge to be able to do it again.”

Even though there are bigger clubs than Town, even at step three, with far greater financial might? “Are they really that much stronger? What we have is a debt-free club,” argued Paul. “We [spent] twelve years at step three and we know how competitive it is. But as we also know in football, it can be boom one day and bust the next. What some of these clubs have done to try and get promotion is unsustainable.”

Ever the realist, having been at the forefront of Enfield Town’s very existence as a club, Paul doesn’t buy the argument that its unique status will necessarily have to change for it to move forward.

“Would it be a struggle to remain at step two as a fan-owned club? Maybe, but there are ways we could grow, for instance by increasing revenue streams, including sponsorship. Other predominantly fan-owned clubs have done it.

“Let’s face it, we’ve been finding our feet over the last couple of years. This has been a big step up for everyone. We’ve moved from a club largely reliant on volunteers to a much more professional basis.”

While future outside investment would certainly be considered – indeed encouraged – in terms of involvement in the running of the club, there is one no-go area, and that relates to Enfield Town’s 99-year lease of the ground.

“The red line is never giving anybody any interest in the ground itself,” said Paul. “We’ve been there before and we all know what happened. It belongs to the club and its fans and the board would never ever entertain giving that away.”

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.