DUDLEY Town's hopes of returning home have been boosted by a pair of key signings – the local MP and the Mayor of the West Midlands.
The Midland Football League outfit, currently groundsharing at Sporting Khalsa, Willenhall, has secured political backing for its ‘Bring ‘Um Home' campaign, the bid to end years of exile.
Subsidence saw the Robins rushed out of the Sports Centre ground in the heart of the town near Dudley Castle in 1985.
Groundshares and a move to the Round Oak, Brierley Hill, followed but rising costs saw the club drop out of the Southern League in 1997.
It returned to the West Midlands (Regional) League the following season and stayed there until the post-Covid reshuffle of the National League System.
History was made last season with 101 league goals and 100 points sealing the Division One title and with Marco Longhi, the MP for Dudley North, and Andy Street, the elected mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, on board, Robins director Stephen Austin is daring to dream.
“We believe we are getting closer,” he said.
“The aspiration is a community stadium and complex that would primarily host the first team with pitches for our youth teams, to bring them in from different areas of the borough.
“Success on the field has helped. That in itself has raised the profile of the club significantly and ever since we have had Marco and Andy on board, the outpouring of support for Dudley Town has been great.”
Marathon
Dudley Council leader Patrick Harley has publicly confirmed a potential site has been identified, and while Austin accepts that a homecoming for the senior side could be three-to-five years away, Longhi told The NLP he would be “like a dog with a bone”. “We are on a journey,” he said.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint, and there might be some pit stops along the way but I am absolutely committed. With the support of my team and others around us we are going to make this happen, by hook or by crook.
“You can't magic up land or easily overcome planning objections – parking, floodlights, proximity to housing estates, noise abatement, they are all things that have to be dealt with but I am like a dog with a bone and not the sort of person who will stop if the computer says no.
“If there's a problem, there's always a way around it and it would take something very significant to persuade me that we had reached the end of the line.
“What the club can be assured of is that if we do reach that stage, it will not be for the want of trying.”
