After a decade of a failed experiment, the spectre of Town is finally put to rest today, as the debts are paid to the HMRC,  and the club begins a new chapter as Nuneaton Borough.

Yes, I know we’ve been Nuneaton Borough for all of this season and it’s been an inauspicious one at best, but take a walk anywhere around Liberty Way and Town still haunts us, physically and metaphorically.

From the signage, to the last failed attempt at a season of full time football, so much about the start of this season was a Town folly. Nuneaton Borough could not and did not support full time football at this level.

The fears of and worries of the wider community, both in terms of gate paying punters and businesses who may have been persuaded to part with their cash, clung strongly to the club as one mysterious and isolated owner followed another.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Then came the beginning of the end of Town.

December 6th 2018 will be seen in years to come as a turning point in the fortunes of this club. Jimmy Ginnelly’s appointment as manager came to symbolise so much more. The local hero was here, ushered into an impossible job, but with the whole community behind him. Gates bumped, there was even a win, and hope sprang eternal on the pitch.

Off the pitch, it would take a little longer, but for a moment consider what would have happened had Nick Hawkins not made that appointment. Right now, the club would be facing a winding up order that it might not have been able to find a way out of. No one will truly know what might have happened, we only know what did.

Through the dedication and hard work of Jimmy, Adam, Mark and Carly, as well as the support of the Coop and a string of familiar faces that have always rallied around the club, and some new backers to boot, the club has been, it seems, saved. Tonight, the back office team will return to Liberty Way with a weight lifted off their shoulders and finally they can stop fighting fires and look to the future.

And in that moment, when the HMRC winding up order is paid, and the bank accounts unfrozen, the sun will set on Nuneaton Town, whilst rising on the other side of that coin, ushering in a brave new era of Nuneaton Borough.

One of the key criticisms of going back to the Borough, was that it was just a name. The last 12 months have proven and disproven that at the same time. We may have been called Borough this year,  but it was without a doubt, the final throes of the Town era.

And it ends with one, unanimous, inspiring and positive message to all and sundry…

The Borough are back!