Prestatyn Town F.C.
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| Full name | Prestatyn Town Football Club |
|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Seasiders |
| Founded | 1910 |
| Ground | Bastion Road |
| Capacity | 2,300 (200 seated) |
| Chairman | Chris Tipping |
| Manager | Neil Gibson |
| League | Welsh Premier League |
| 2016–17 | Cymru Alliance, 1st (promoted) |
| Website | Club home page |
Prestatyn Town Football Club (Welsh: Clwb Pêl Droed Tref Prestatyn) is a Welsh football club based in Prestatyn, Denbighshire. As of the 2017-18 season, Prestatyn Town will play in the Welsh Premier League after finishing 1st in the current season.
RECORDS show that football has been played in Prestatyn since the early 1890s with games being played on an undeveloped field on Marine Road. Other pitches around the town were also utilized but the club as we now know it only came into being in the 1930s when it settled on the old Bastion Road ground behind what is now the Central Beach Club. The early history of Prestatyn Football Club is somewhat sketchy as there were many teams who lasted just a couple of seasons before folding but one Prestatyn side did enjoy some form of longevity, winning the North Wales Coast FA Junior Cup in 1928/9. The guiding genius behind this team was Sam Bennett who, it seems, was a real one man band.
Bennett was the manager, carried out training, acted as club linesman, headed up the committee and also supplied match reports to the local press!
Although never one of North Wales` football`s leading lights in the pre and inter-war era, Prestatyn attracted their share of star players including left back Alf Smith who, according to legend, never disclosed his age to anyone but had a long and distinguished career with the Seasiders before hanging up his boots after a spell with Penmaenmawr.
Other names include George Drummond, an old-fashioned wing-half who possessed incredible skill and should have played at a far higher level, winger-cum-centre forward Roger Jones banged in goals for fun before retiring to take up a pub in Abergele. Jones had also played with great credit for Rhyl in their Birmingham League days. Then there were the Roberts brothers, Alf and George and the wonderfully-named `Cunnie` Jones who left Prestatyn to become a stalwart centre-half with Rhyl.
For a time in the late 1940s the club adopted the name Chandypore FC (the original name of the above mentioned Central Beach Club) when they operated in the Dyserth Area League but quickly reverted to Prestatyn Town and, apart from dabbling with sponsor's names (Prestatyn Town Nova in 1990) have remained so ever since. Success in these early days was in short supply, the only triumph of any note being the capture of the North Wales Coast FA Junior Cup in 1928/9.
In the late 1960s the old Bastion Road ground was swallowed up by housing and after considering using a pitch in the middle of the old Prestatyn Raceway, now the site of Pontin's Holiday Village, the club moved to their present headquarters off Bastion Gardens in 1970/1 season which has been slowly but steadily modernized ever since. For most of this period Town had been members of either the Dyserth Area League or the Welsh League North but, after becoming founder members of the Clwyd League in 1974/5 Prestatyn enjoyed immediate success under the charge of manager Eaton Woodfine, winning the inaugural and subsequent titles and bagging a host of cups along the way until, after finishing runners-up to St Asaph City in 1992/3, they decided to take the plunge and re-join the Welsh League North, now known as the Welsh Alliance. During the 1993/4, under the management of former Queen of the South professional Eddie Garrett, season Town finished in eighth place but won the Alves Cup for the first time, beating St Asaph in an exciting final at Connahs Quay Prestyn's Captain Martin Trigg the Goalscorer. The following season saw the Seasiders set up an incredible end of season run of 14 straight wins to finish just four points behind champions Rhydymwyn.
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