David Sneyd

SOMETIMES YOU JUST have to accept that you won’t find a better intro paragraph to a topic that football fans in this country might only be vaguely familiar with.

So here is Matt Slater of The Athletic from July 2022, after another club in England was pulled back from the financial abyss by the short strings.

“Frank Rothwell left school at 14 to repair tractors but then built a multi-million-pound business. He is also the oldest man to row across the Atlantic, raising another million for charity in the process, is one of only 10 sailors to circumnavigate both North and South America, has survived cancer and has built the world’s only coal-powered Land Rover. But he is not promising any miracles at Oldham Athletic, the 127-year-old football club Rothwell has just rescued from four years of rancorous decline and almost certain bankruptcy.”

Just shy of three years on and both Rothwell and Oldham are just a little bit older now. But this is no longer a tired, old club. It is rejuvenated and, tomorrow will be 90 minutes (or more) away from returning to the English Football League when they face Southend United in the National League play-off final at Wembley.

Barnet, managed by Dubliner Dean Brennan, just secured automatic promotion out of the fifth tier of English football with 101 points. A division where players are often on a merry-go-round between clubs, with a somewhat insular transfer market and varied ownership models.

It sounds a lot like home, although the seven-year broadcast deal agreed with DAZN is twice the length of the one agreed between Virgin and the League of Ireland and is estimated to be worth between circa £100,000-130,000 per club.

Southend’s story is one of equal distress in recent years, their fall and fragile rise the epitome of a dysfunctional ecosystem that led to their relegation in 2021 after 101 years in the Football League. Kevin Maher is the former Ireland underage international attempting to inspire a return as manager.

For Oldham, their tale of woe can also be quickly told, one they feared might become an epitaph: First founding members of the Premier League relegated from the Football League.

That ignominy came in the months before Rothwell came to the rescue. Their last home win in the Premier League was a 4-1 triumph over Queens Park Rangers on 2 April, 1994. There were 10,440 in attendance at Boundary Park.

Thirty one years later they remain in that venue just north of Manchester, some 13 kilometres from Old Trafford, but there were more fans through the gates (10,865) for their most recent home in the play-off series than when they last tasted victory in the top flight.

That is an indication of their resilience, something that was tested severely under the previous stewardship of Abdallah Lemsagam, who took control of Oldham in 2018 and, despite insisting that he invested close to €7 million, oversaw their collapse.

Rothwell, the local businessman, was ushered in and the respective ownership models of these two clubs vying for promotion are also indicative of contrasting models that have emerged throughout Europe – including the League of Ireland.

None have quite matched the glamour of Hollywood pair Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhinney at Wrexham. They took over in 2022, the same year Oldham were relegated, went up as champions the following seasons. Successive promotions have followed and they’re now in the Championship.

Australian businessman Justin Rees has a much lower profile and heads up the Custodians of Southend United (COSU) consortium, with further investment announced in November from USA-based technology entrepreneur Shivaas Gulati.

Given the club announced a pre-tax loss on 1 May of £2.65 million for the 12 months up until the end of July ’24, it’s understandable further resources were required. Relegated clubs from League Two also receive parachute payments for up two seasons in the National League, worth 100% of the estimated £1.5 million that comes for the EFL’s “basic award amount” as well as solidarity payments from the Premier League. If they remain for a second term it drops to 55%.

It means, like the League of Ireland, this is a division where budgets and player wages can fluctuate wildly, where players taking part in this game at Wembley will be earning upwards of £5,000 per week and opponents elsewhere will be scratching around on a few hundred.

The combined budgets for these two sides in the play-off final are estimated by sources with knowledge of the league to be in the region of £4m-£5m. Additional revenues will of course come from promotion to the EFL, such as an estimated £300,000 per year for League Two clubs as part of the new television deal that was signed with Sky Sports ahead of last season.

There are additional expenditures, of course, and only this April the English FA published the total amount paid to agents in the professional pyramid – of which 23 of the 24 clubs in the National League are full-time, with only Tamworth, who finished 10th, understood to still be part-time.

One of the four who did suffer relegation are also believed to have an annual budget touching £2m, with only a small reduction expected to bounce back up given there are players in the Northern and Southern National Leagues that can earn up to £2,000 per week.

Back on the agent-fee front, the English FA tallied the amount in the men’s game to be £483,615,068 between February 2024 and 2025.

Of that, £952,638 came from the National League system with Oldham (£94,707) and Southend (£103,227) still trailing Forest Green Rovers (£133,184) and York City (£109,596).

Top National League clubs may, of course, be in a position to offer more money to some of the best League of Ireland players but not by much at the top end and ours is not really a market too many will dabble in.

For Oldham and Southend, Wembley provides a glorious day out after their darkest hour. But as both of these clubs know the shot at glory always comes at a cost.