Local heroes lead Athletic to promotion
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“Back in November or December you would never have believed this was possible, the run we have been on since we lost 5-1 Buxton on December 7 has been amazing.
“We have only lost three matches since then and only once since New Year’s Day, that is a great run and the town has really got on board in the play-off games.
“Before the final I was in town for a few hours and you could see the way that local people were getting behind the club. One of the main things we wanted to do when we started the club up was to give the town the best football that we could and I feel that we are doing that.
“The demand for tickets for the final was amazing with over 7,000 trying to buy 2,800 tickets, and when we organised the YouTube stream of the game we had over 10,5000 people following the game online. I had congratulations messages from Thailand, Canada, Bulgaria and Malta among others after the game.”
Bull is already looking towards next season and the challenges the club will face adapting to life at National League North level.
He added: “The plans for next season are already under way.
“We knew the minimum capacity for the National League North was 3,000 so we consulted the county council to review the capacity, and they have now granted us a new capacity limit which is over 3,000.
“We will also need to look at giving the away supporters more facilities and making it a better experience for them as attracting the away fans will help the local economy hugely.
“We are now going from a division with one full-time team into a division with lots of full-time teams, there is also a lot more travel involved as we could be heading south as far as Gloucester City so we will have to look carefully at costs and budgets.”