Rooted at the bottom of League 2, Newport County are slipping deeper into financial trouble. Their promotion from the Conference in 2013 was funded by lottery winner Lee Scadding, but he has withdrawn his backing. The former truck driver got tired of funding losses of £40,000 a month.
He has handed responsibility for running the club to the Supporters’ Trust. They have until the end of September to raise the £225,000 needed to repay creditors and complete their takeover. So far they have raised half that amount.
Rooted at the bottom of League 2, Newport County are slipping deeper into financial trouble. Their promotion from the Conference in 2013 was funded by lottery winner Lee Scadding, but he has withdrawn his backing. The former truck driver got tired of funding losses of £40,000 a month.
He has handed responsibility for running the club to the Supporters’ Trust. They have until the end of September to raise the £225,000 needed to repay creditors and complete their takeover. So far they have raised half that amount.
A playing budget of £1.4m has been reduced to nearly £900,000. That is what Grimsby paid out last year and the same amount as Accrington Stanley had in 2009, then said to be the lowest budget in League Two. Some players have left for non-league where they can still get £1,000 a week.
In 1989 the club went bust after a convicted American fraudster Jerry Sherman took advantage of their difficulties. For a while the Exiles, as they came to be known, were forced to play in England, starting off in the Hellenic League at Moreton-in-the-Marsh in the Cotswolds.
Even at the height of their success at Somerton Park, attendances rarely went above 6,000. These days, their average attendance is half that of landlords Newport Gwent Dragons and not even a hundreth of the town’s population.