iPhones NewsBy Ivan Speck
PUBLISHED: 16:31 EST, 30 July 2013 | UPDATED: 16:31 EST, 30 July 2013
Two of every three shop fronts in John Frost Square are either painted over to conceal the emptiness within or boarded up.
The square, named after one of the 18th-century leaders of the Chartist movement who marched down from the Welsh valleys with 3,000 locals to demand voting rights for the working man, is now a symbol of despair.
This is Newport, an aching reminder of a city with its place in Britain's political history but without jobs to fill the present. It has the second highest unemployment rate in Wales.
Apart from hosting the 2010 Ryder Cup, Newport's sporting landscape has been equally bleak in recent years, but at last there is a feel-good story in a community whose football club lost its League status 25 years ago, went out of business nine months later and was then banished to a Cotswolds town across the border.
Fellow Welsh clubs Swansea and Cardiff have embarked on incredible journeys in recent years, but neither has travelled as far as Newport. Literally. And now they are back.
They have a former Premier League player as manager and a Lottery- winning millionaire chairman who contributed to the £100,000 spent this summer on the Rodney Parade pitch they share with rugby union-playing landlords Newport Dragons.
Les Scadding, a petrol-tanker driver who slept on his mum's settee after the end of his 27-year first marriage, was persuaded to leave his native Bristol for Newport by his sister.
In November 2009, overdrawn at the bank, he bought two lucky dip tickets for that night's Euromillions draw. One line won him £7.60, the other £45.5million.
A Bristol City fan by birth and boyhood, he joined the board at Newport three years ago. He has signed cheques of note for just two players - £150,000 last season for striker Christian Jolley, whose 15 goals in 25 starts propelled Newport to promotion via the Conference play-off final, and £100,000 this summer for midfielder Adam Chapman from Oxford.
Scadding said: 'You have to have boundaries. I'm not a sugar daddy. I'm not an open cheque book. I'm a custodian of the club. Whenever we are going to do anything, whether on the pitch or off it, we sit down and think: "Is this going to be good for the club or not?"
'Everything is looked at, everything is talked about by the manager, myself, the board, over a pint and a bit of food somewhere so that the outcome is done in the right way.'
You do not have to delve very deep to understand the reasons for prudence. In 1981, a team managed by Len Ashurst and boasting legendary club forward Tommy Tynan and a young John Aldridge, reached the European Cup-Winners' Cup quarter-finals.
Six short seasons later the club went into administration. To stay in existence, they sold their old Somerton Park ground to the council. It is now a housing estate.
The entire first-team squad was sacked, the youth-team players who took their place had to wash their own kit and, conceding 105 goals, they slipped out of the Football League. In February 1989, with debts of £330,000, the club folded.
The fans formed a new club, Newport AFC. The council insisted it was the old club in disguise and refused to let them play at Somerton Park because of unpaid debts.
Even worse, the FA of Wales refused to let them play in Wales because the new club wanted to enter the English pyramid system, not the newly-formed League of Wales.
Hence the move to the Gloucestershire town of Moreton-in-Marsh with 400 diehards travelling up for home games in the Hellenic League. A nomadic existence ensued, including two seasons ground-sharing with Gloucester City.
So did four promotions, the last of which was secured at Wembley in May under the management of former Tottenham defender Justin Edinburgh.
Having chased - his word - Football League status as a manager at Fisher Athletic and Rushden & Diamonds, both now defunct, Edinburgh is well-placed to understand that history and tradition are everything when it comes to clubs returning from non-League oblivion.
Edinburgh said: 'You can try to manufacture a club and try to manufacture fans but historically this is a club with fantastic support. It's that fan base which gave them the chance to bounce back.
'The move back into the city to Rodney Parade last season gave us a lift. Our average gates doubled to 2,600 and we'll get a few more fans to return through the sentiment of the club being back in the League. We'll bring a few more out of their armchairs and we'll grow together.
'Driving down to the ground last season and seeing young boys in Newport County shirts made me smile. It's good to see. There is a feel-good factor around the city and we've just got to try to make that momentum count for us this year.'
With the club's re-birth came a new nickname - The Exiles. It applies, too, to midfielder Michael Flynn, a Newport lad and player as a teenager in the Southern League Midland Division days. Now 32, he re-signed from Bradford at the start of last season.
Flynn said: 'I've had promotions elsewhere and I missed a massive season at Bradford last year, but it meant more to me getting Newport back in the League. It was my best day in football. I knew what it meant to the fans at Wembley. They deserve it for all their dedication.
'I might as well be honest about this because I'm a hometown boy - Newport's not a great city at the minute shops-wise and job-wise. A lot of it is rock-bottom really, but hopefully with all the positivity around Welsh sport, we can get Newport to take the same right steps that we are as a club on the pitch.'
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