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Non league club rebrands and plots to reach the EFL with seven promotions in twelve years

A non league club based in the eleventh tier rebrands and plots to reach the EFL with seven promotions in the next twelve years. Welwyn Garden City Development will now be known as AFC Welwyn, and are to keep some of their management and playing staff.
The 2022/23 season saw them finish ninth in the Herts Senior County League Premier Division with 40 points from 30 games played.
AFC Welwyn are set to play in the Spartan South Midlands League Division Two next season and are to groundshare with Welwyn Garden City FC
The club unveiled a video, named “Welcome to AFC Welwyn”, showing interviews with the founder, along with players, management and more including some pre-season matches and highlights from training and trials.

AFC Welwyn’s co-founder Tawhid Juneja said in an introduction video: “Right, my name is Tawhid Juneja and the reason we’re here today is to introduce the production team to the management team, introduce our home ground to everyone that’s going to be involved and show them where all the funds going to be happening this year.
“The football club is called AFC Welwyn. Obviously we’re based in Welwyn Garden City, so it made sense to have something that’s linked to the local area.“We’re called the Romans. Again, the reason we’re called the Romans is because there’s some heritage here in Welwyn with the Roman Bath.
“So again we wanted to link it something to a local area.
“The way that we were formed, we have taken over a position from an existing club which was actually under the umbrella of Welwyn Garden City. It was their under 23s team.
“So we have retained some of the management team and some of the playing staff, but we’ve also done a lot of work to obviously recruit new players and we brought new people on board to help with the coaching, but essentially we’ve taken their position. “But we’ll be playing in a slightly different league, which is at the same level. So we’ll be playing in the South Midlands league. Opposed to playing in the Herts County League. So the step of the pyramid that we’re going to be playing in is going to be step seven, so that is seven steps below football league.
“The ambition of the club got lots of different goals. So obviously as a club we want to be successful on the pitch, so that means promotion. We have set a target of seven promotions in twelve years, so that gives us five years where we can fail.
“Along with us having to be a successful football club on the pitch, we’re going to need support off the pitch. “So we are looking to be able to build a fan base because we are a new club, so we’re looking to build a fan base with local fans.
“But what we’re also looking to do is to be able to create an international fan base.
“Way we’re going to be doing that is we’re going to be harnessing the strength of some social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all the areas where you can get some good content.

“We have teamed up with Kilroy Films who’s going to be creating all of our content for us.
“James Kilroy will be our head of production, so we’ve got quite a significant media team that will be supporting us. “But ultimately for us to be successful, we need to be successful on the pitch, which is hopefully going to create some good moments for James to be able to create good content for people to follow.

”‘Big Rich’, who is also the co-founder, groundsman and manager, said: “Well, my name’s Richard James. My role is one of many things, probably the manager of AFC Welwyn. Also do the groundsman at the club. My beautiful pitch behind me, as you can see, all under renovation and just a general, quite a lot of things really, amongst the club, so making sure we got the balls, the kits, stuff like that. “Make sure T spends loads of money now. General stuff, but yeah, excited, as you can see. Near three years. Near three years. He come to me, I was looking for a big horrible centre off, didn’t care if you could play football or not, just saw it, people putting in tackles, so perfect match and he come along. “First season didn’t quite work did it to start with, for various reasons, went done his own thing and then we sort of made contact back. Well, we never lost contact, always spoke, but football wise about six months ago was to talk about this, really.

First he’s looking to sort of purchase a club, if you like, because he loves his football and then he thought, you know what, I’ve always spent money sending me sponsors, why don’t we do our own club?
And he started off like that, as a conversation inside the club, as the two of us and then there we are, two months later, this whole thing’s taken off great, suits me, don’t cost me no money, so I don’t care. “I’m very old school, I know the game, I know the game, but I think my best skills are sort of motivating players, getting the best out of them. Always treat everyone who plays for me or who’s around me like their family. “And for me, you don’t win nothing in football, nothing. You can have all the money you want, but if you haven’t got that family group that tightness, you achieve nothing. And I’ve got to think, going forward, that’s exactly what we’re going to achieve, because I will make sure that we’re family where he goes from the players to the committee, all of us. “So no doubt in my mind this will be a success or I’ll be having a very difficult conversation myself come Christmas. Sacking myself in the hot tub. Hot tub tactics.“Do you know what? I don’t think everyone wants to win things. I don’t think it’s just success on the pitch if I can see it in five years time and we’ve self sustained the football club with a lot of people following, a lot of people enjoying it with smiles on their faces, that’s success to me. Want to win things. I don’t even like losing at tiddlywinks, I want to win things. But if we can put smiles on faces and pull enjoy themselves, that’s success. That’s my opinion anyway. I think T might disagree. I think he might disagree. If I don’t get them seven promotions in twelve seasons, I think we might be falling out.