New Milton Town F.C.
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| Full name | New Milton Town Football Club |
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| Nickname(s) | The Linnets |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Ground | Fawcetts Field, New Milton |
| Capacity | 1,500 |
| Chairman | Scot MacFarlane, Jordan Hiscock |
| Manager | Shane Sheridan |
| League | Wessex League Division One |
| 2016–17 | Wessex League Division One, 14th of 21 |
| Website | Club home page |
New Milton Town Football Club is a football club based in New Milton, Hampshire, England. They were formed in 1998 by a merger between AFC Lymington and New Milton Town. They were champions of the Wessex League in 1998–99 and 2004–05. They resigned from the Southern Football League in 2007 and played in the Wessex League Premier Division from the 2007–08 season until the end of the 2012-13 season, when they were relegated. The team now plays in the Wessex League Division One.
The club was formed in the summer of 1998 as a result of the merger of AFC Lymington and New Milton Town, as Lymington and New Milton F.C. AFC Lymington had won the Wessex League twice in succession but found their path to promotion into the Southern League blocked by difficulties with ground-grading. It was impossible to improve the facilities at their home ground in Southampton Road, Lymington, to meet the grading criteria of the higher league due to the sharing of the ground with Lymington Cricket Club. Specifically it would have been impossible to have completely enclosed the football pitch and installed the turnstiling and other safety features demanded by the Southern League. New Milton Town, on the other hand, had moved into a new purpose-built ground provided for them by New Milton Town Council, but were languishing in the Hampshire League, seemingly unable to progress to a higher level.
The merger was in effect a takeover by AFC Lymington of the New Milton club in order to gain possession of a ground suitable for progression to a higher level of football, and the new team for the 1998–99 season resembled the old AFC Lymington line-up. No New Milton Town players were included in the first team. New Milton Town F.C. continued for one season back in the Hampshire league under the manager Don Emberson at their new home at Milford-on-Sea, but due to financial constraints the club reluctantly folded. Some dissenters resented the move from Lymington to New Milton, a distance of some eight miles, and formed a new club, Lymington Town, to use the old facilities at Southampton Road, vacated by the AFC club.
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