Wimborne Town FC: How to build a football club
A non-league club's journey from struggle to stability and beyond.
“We’re just the current custodians of the football club, and we simply want to be able to leave the club in a better position than when we found it.”
These are the words of Lee Merrifield, co-owner of Wimborne Town F.C., offering a refreshing and progressive view on how to run a football club.
In my interview with Merrifield, he used two words more than any others: “sustainability” and “infrastructure”.
This ethos is reflected in every decision he and his fellow co-owners, Martin Higgins and Adam Tovey, have made since taking charge.
The trio purchased the Dorset-based Southern League Premier South side in November 2021. After suffering relegation at the end of their first season, they have overseen two consecutive seasons of progress, both on and off the pitch
“We’re just the current custodians of the football club, and we simply want to be able to leave the club in a better position than when we found it.”
Financial Struggles
Founded in 1872, The Magpies have long been a staple of the local non-league game, with the club's greatest moment coming in 1992, when they became the first Dorset side to win a competitive fixture at Wembley, beating Guiseley 5-2 to win the FA Vase.
However, a decade ago, the club faced serious debts, and there was a real danger that it could cease to exist.
“The most difficult time I’ve faced at the club”, began Club President Ken Stewart, “was when we nearly folded. It was when Paula Henley was chairperson, and she had some directors behind her who weren’t as good as she thought, and they let her down completely.”
Stewart has been involved with the club since the start of the millennium, initially as an owner, and was only too willing to do what he could to keep the club running.
“Paula then called myself and Tony Grant (the current Chairman) up and asked us to step in to save the club. It was tough going. If my wife knew how much I’d put in, I’d be”, he stops himself, “I think she knows about a third of what I put in.”
Pre-match warm-up | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Pre-match warm-up | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
The Magpies attack a corner against Poole | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
The Magpies attack a corner against Poole | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Rebirth
In 2020, the club’s prospects appeared to be improving as the Magpies moved out from their previous home, Cuthbury, and into New Cuthbury, now known as The Wyatt Homes Stadium, for sponsorship reasons.
However, the club’s fortunes really began to change at the end of 2021 when the current ownership group took charge.
According to Stewart: “The owners have been a lifesaver for the club, in that if you want to move a club forward, you have to put some solid money in.”
Since taking over the club, the ownership trio has sought to improve the club as a whole rather than just its league position.
“Having a winning team is helpful, but actually, it’s about matchday experience; it's about making people want to come and watch football”, said Merrifield.
A look around the club’s modern, purpose-built Wyatt Homes Stadium, it is clear to see that careful consideration has been given to this principle.
A food hut offering scampi, pizza, and all the other foods you would expect to find at a football ground; a tea hut providing a variety of refreshments; and a large clubhouse with a well-stocked bar serving a varied selection of ales, lagers, and ciders on draught all ensure that fans are never left wanting while watching their team.
Merrifield believes, "It’s all about making people want to spend an afternoon at Wimborne Town rather than doing something else.”
This attitude to developing the club is clearly working, with the club breaking its record attendance figures twice last season.
First, the Wyatt Homes Stadium hosted 1,852 fans for the club’s second qualifying round tie against Torquay United, manager Tim Sills’ former club, beating the previous record of 1,400, set in Wimborne’s 1982 fourth qualifying round tie against Merthyr Tydfil.
Later, in the club’s final home game of the season, 2.307 fans attended the potential title-deciding game against title rivals Frome Town.
But it’s not just off the pitch where Merrifield and his co-owners are looking to develop the club: “We want to push towards being more sustainable while also being more competitive on the pitch”, he explained.
After suffering relegation at the end of their first season as club owners, the trio have overseen consistent progress over the last two seasons. Culminating in the Magpies getting promoted back to the Southern League Premier Division last season.
While acknowledging that “competing at the highest level we can” is good for the club as a business, Merrifield emphasised that the club's success is about more than just finances:
“First and foremost, it’s exciting for fans. Everybody wants to win a league and get promoted because you can go a long time without that happening or be involved with a club, and it never happens. So it was great, it was a great day out, and it was great to see everybody enjoying it.”
Tim Sills: A New Era
A major catalyst for the club’s recent success has been the appointment of Tim Sills as first team manager.
Before joining Wimborne, Sills managed fellow Dorset side Hamworthy United, where he enjoyed a period of relative success, leading his side to an FA Vase semi-final and winning the Wessex Premier League, getting the Hammers promoted to step 4 of the non-league pyramid for the first time.
In October 2022, despite Hamworthy then playing in the same league as Wimborne, Sills felt he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to manage the Magpies:
“We’d done really well at Hamworthy, but we felt we’d hit a bit of a ceiling, so we moved to this club, which had great facilities but was in the doldrums a little bit on the pitch.”
When he joined the club, Wimborne sat 16th in the league. Within weeks of joining, Sills identified the issues and quickly worked to rectify them:
“After the first couple of training sessions, it was clear that the fitness levels needed to be improved, and we needed to change the players mentality from the losing ways they’d become used to.”
These changes had an immediate impact, and Wimborne went on a 14-game unbeaten run. They finished fifth in the league but lost in the playoff semi-finals to eventual promoted side Sholing.
Then, in his first full season, after a summer spent rebuilding his squad, Sills led Wimborne to the Southern League Division One South title, securing the title with victory against Melksham on the final day.
Sills is no stranger to winning promotion on the final day of the season, famously scoring the clinching goal for Torquay United in their 2-0 Conference Playoff Final win against Cambridge United in 2009.
Comparing his promotion with Wimborne to his accomplishment with Torquay, Sills said: “As a player, you’re controlling what you’re doing on the pitch, and you have your teammates for help, whereas as a manager, there's a bit more pressure on yourself and you can’t affect what’s happening on the pitch as much.
You’re one cog in a whole team, whereas as a manager, you’re a bit more central to how the team is set up. So it’s very different, but I have huge amounts of pride for both.”
Tim Sills explains the impact of the owners in his time at the club.
Tim Sills | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Tim Sills | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
A post-match huddle | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
A post-match huddle | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Promotion: An Historic Day
While promotion may have been a familiar feeling for Sills, for loyal Wimborne fans, who had not experienced a league title for over 20 years, the club's final-day victory against Melksham was even more meaningful.
Richard Barton has been a Wimborne Town fan since the early 80s. After some time away from the club, Barton fell back in love with Wimborne when he began taking his son to games, driven by the rising costs of following his beloved West Ham United.
When asked what his favourite moment in his four decades supporting the Magpies was, Barton’s response was simple: “Melksham!”.
“We should have walked the league last season, really”, he admits, “and we ended up leaving it right to the last minute. But the number of Wimborne fans that were there that day, and the way it was celebrated, was class.”
How Richard Barton became a Wimborne fan.
Graham Dunn is Wimborne Town’s match reporter and has been involved with the club since their 1992 FA Vase win. A fan initially, Dunn became programme editor in 2011 before becoming the match reporter.
For Dunn, the club’s title-winning day out at Melksham ranks among his three favourite moments in football:
“My first came when I was 14, and my then local club, Harwich and Parkeston, reached the first round of the FA Cup and were drawn away to Crystal Palace. The next was the FA Vase Final in 1992, and Melksham is right up there with those.”
Wimborne lift the league title at Melksham | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Wimborne lift the league title at Melksham | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Promotion was also a significant moment for the club’s current longest-serving player, Harry Morgan: “That day. I won’t ever forget it. You can go through your career not winning much, being part of a mid-table team just coasting along, so to win a trophy and get a medal felt really good. It was like being a kid again.”
Morgan has been with the Magpies since November 2020, suffering relegation from the Southern Premier with the club at the end of the 21/22 season, but he was always confident the club would make it back:
“As soon as we went down, I knew we’d bounce back. Initially, I thought it would be straight away, but that was probably a bit naive, and it took an extra year. With the facilities and where the club was at (off the pitch), I knew we’d have to go up eventually. So, luckily, we did it fairly quickly.”
The Impact of Promotion
Alongside the usual advantages of promotion, Wimborne’s rise to a higher division has valuable geographical implications.
“In the league we’re in now, there are a lot more local games with the likes of Poole, Dorchester, and Sholing,” explained Merrifield. “It’s a more compact league, and that means larger away attendances. At the end of the day we want to be playing Poole and Dorchester every season - that’s at the heart of why we wanted to get promoted.”
Playing at a higher level has also improved the club's ability to attract talent, exemplified in the re-signing of prolific striker Toby Holmes.
Holmes first played for Wimborne from 2016 to 2019, scoring 132 goals in 143 games before leaving the club to play at a higher level.
Spells at Salisbury and Taunton followed; however, the birth of his son saw Holmes move to Poole Town so he could play closer to home.
Even while playing for Wimborne’s local rivals while at the Dolphins, he still harboured ambitions to return to the club where he’d had so much personal success:
“There was always a part of me that wanted to come back. I felt there was some unfinished business. I always wanted to play again for Wimborne, not just at the end of my career, but at a point where I still had something to offer.”
Holmes has made it clear that he doesn’t want his second stint to be a mere swansong, setting some lofty goals for the remainder of the season: “As a striker, you always aim for that 20-goal mark. I scored seven so far this season at Poole, so I’m aiming for another 13. I’ve managed it seven out of the last nine years, so that's a nice little target.”
Toby Holmes on what he thinks the club can achieve this season.
The Future
With promotion secured last season and ambitious players like Holmes signed, the club’s leadership are not content with sitting still. They want to push on and develop the club further.
However, any growth must come with caution: “We would love to see the club operate in the National League South,” said Merrifield; “We have the base and infrastructure to do that, but it takes a lot of money, and we want the club to be sustainable.”
Sills echoes this sentiment, feeling that if the club goes up “another level in the next year or two, then it will be more than able to sustain that.” Although, he did emphasise that the club wants to “stabilise in this league at the moment.”
Merrifield, however, is realistic and understands that “clubs do have ceilings”, though he cites the example of Eastleigh FC as a team that has managed to grow to a level beyond what may have initially seemed possible:
“I remember going to watch Eastleigh when they were a Wessex League side in a ground that was worse than our old ground. And now they’re attracting crowds of 2,500 at the same ground I used to go to 30 years ago.”
Eastleigh F.C.'s Silverlake Stadium | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Eastleigh F.C.'s Silverlake Stadium | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
For Sills, this ability to progress is part of the reason he first joined the club: “We’d done really well at Hamworthy, but we felt we’d hit a little bit of a ceiling. So we moved to this club, which was in the same division at the time but has a much higher ceiling.”
For now, though, the club's goal is clear: to survive in the Southern League Premier.
“I think we've probably hit our peak for the moment,” began Stewart; “Our remit to the manager this season was to stay in the league and then move forward again in the next couple of years.”
Merrifield added: “We’re realistic; we’ve come up from the league below, and there's a lot of money being spent in this league. It’s super competitive. There are some eye-watering budgets, and we’re in a tight spot geographically for attracting players - we’re in competition with a lot of teams for the same players.”
“It’s about getting used to being back at this level and making it look like we belong. Double promotions would be lovely, but it was probably never realistic and wasn’t really what we wanted. Mid-table is ideally what we’re looking for.”
However, staying in the league will be no easy feat: “Step 3 has gotten better since we were last in it,” explained Morgan; “The money in the league has gone up, and the quality has gone up. Every week is so competitive, and you don’t get an easy game.”
Graham Dunn offers a different perspective on what's next for the club.
Filming a Wimborne Town training session | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Filming a Wimborne Town training session | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
The Wyatt Homes Stadium in the sun | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
The Wyatt Homes Stadium in the sun | Photo by Jimmy Bowie
Whatever happens this season, the future is bright for Wimborne Town. With ambitious yet sensible ownership, a manager who is no stranger to promotion, and players who have bought into the club’s vision, progression for the Magpies seems inevitable.
While Wimborne may seem like a small, local, non-league club, the potential for growth is clear. As Lee Merrifield succinctly put it: “Clubs can always go a little bit further than people think; it just requires the right people and resources.”
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