Published: 02:00 BST, 24 August 2026 | Updated: 08:10 BST, 24 August 2026
It’s the annual pina colada festival in the Witton area of Cheshire – the song about the drink, which topped the US charts in the late 1970s, was written by someone local to the place and they’ve spotted the commercial opportunity – so there are people walking around dressed as pineapples and wearing big yellow glasses on Saturday lunchtime. But life has not exactly been a cocktail party for Nelson, an East Lancashire ninth tier club, just lately.
They breeze through one of the challenges which faces them after arriving to face opponents one step above them in the pyramid. Their new yellow away kits for the season haven’t arrived and last season’s issue, which they’re still using, don’t have a No 18 jersey – needed today because you’re allowed seven subs in the FA Cup. Someone finds a white marker pen and inks the number on to a plain yellow away shirt. Wearing numbers on your back is mandatory in the tournament.
This is a minor obstacle compared with the floodlight problems which has been testing Nelson minds since we left them celebrating extra preliminary round victory at their ‘Little Wembley’ ground two weeks ago. That was the first part of our journey to Wembley told in 13 instalments, following a club as far as they go and then picking up with the team who knock them out, all the way to the final.
They’d signed off on a £30,000 contract, helped by FA grants, to replace the system of lights which had started to fail during evening games, only to find that the new ones still didn’t work.
The approved contractors didn’t seem to have mentioned that the cables and wiring supplying the lights also needed ripping out, and yet were sending the club legal letters demanding payment, as Nelson’s directors sought advice from the FA about the black hole they risked disappearing into.
Inside the home dressing room at the Bedspace Trust Community Stadium
Nelson captain Bill Priestley receives some treatment ahead of kick-off
A home steward – proudly sporting Witton Albion's colours – tucks into a pie at half-time
When we caught up with Nelson at their league away game at Charnock Richard in Lancashire, last Tuesday night, the floodlights were the prime topic of conversation as the players arrived in the car park. There had even been talk of a temporary ground move, which did not exactly delight the North West Counties League. Nelson’s proactive club sponsor Monks Contractors had offered supplying temporary structures.
In the end, they just went to work again. Volunteers helped dig two 100m trenches to lay the new cabling to the new lights and on Wednesday, they flicked the switch once more. ‘Let there be light?’ The look on Witton Albion director Rob Doherty’s face as the visiting contingent are welcomed into Witton’s snug little boardroom suggests so. ‘As of three days ago, they were working,’ he relates. The FA provided emergency funding.
Both these teams badly want to win this FA Cup Preliminary Round game. In his extremely modestly proportioned office Witton manager Benny Harrison, whose day job is a teacher at a special educational school, reflects at 2pm on the profound effects Marine experienced after playing Tottenham in the Third Round in 2021. The windfall helped win them two promotions in three years.
But as the rival teams’ executives gather in that boardroom, there’s a sense of mutual empathy about the existential threats which can be just around the corner for any non-league club.
‘There’s what goes on out on the pitch, and the fans and all that the lovely stuff,’ says Witton director Paul Sanderson, when Nelson relate their floodlight troubles. ‘And then there’s survivability stuff that fans don't know about. Trying to navigate things that can threaten your existence if you’re not prepared for anything.’
Nelson were on a precipice before new co-owners Stewart Fort and Chris Price arrived three years ago, invested and built up the team of volunteers who are their lifeblood. But Witton’s excellent little club museum, charting a 139-year history and signposted ‘Probably the best non-League football museum in the world’, shows that they’ve also ridden football’s rollercoaster.