The £1m game that will show the world Oldham were worth saving ...Middle East

The biggest game in 35 years is how Oldham’s owner and chairman Frank Rothwell describes the National League play-off final at Wembley. At a board meeting on Tuesday the club’s hierarchy gathered to piece together a sense of what the future might hold should they prevail against Southend.

Rothwell, a fearless eccentric in anybody’s estimation, has his own take three years after saving the club from the morgue in the summer of 2022.

“This is a very special week for Oldham,” he tells The i Paper. “The fans still sing songs about the last time we went to Wembley for a final in 1990 (League Cup vs Nottingham Forest). They will have to sing some new ones now.

“In any business there are three key phases. First of all when you start up or take over, you have to survive. Oldham Athletic and Boundary Park were going into extinction. Can you survive that initial period, that first season or whatever? After that you have to consolidate. The third thing is growth. Sunday means growth for us. We want to tick that box.”

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Rothwell has made three visits to Wembley since its renovation 18 years ago, the first to watch the 2007 FA Cup final between Manchester United and Chelsea, the second to watch Wigan “stuff” Manchester City in the cup six years later and latterly to watch his beloved AC/DC, for which he dug deep again at an auction, raising more than £1m for youth clubs in the north of England.

Rothwell’s entrepreneurial march since leaving school without qualifications at 14, has been a lesson in seizing opportunities and learning from the inevitable cock-ups, of which there have been plenty, including one at the AC/DC concert that should serve him well on Sunday.

“We were the first to arrive. We had seats in the Royal Box. All the seats are red apart from four, where the royals usually sit. I saw the blue seats and thought AC/DC’s management will want to sit there, so we sat behind them. Then four scallies came and took them. I thought ‘shit’, I won’t be doing that again.”

Since the owners are the closest to a regal presence on Sunday, Rothwell and his wife should have the honour with their counterparts from Southend. The day is already mapped out.

“We’ll drive there and back in a day. At the moment I’m on alcohol free beer. That Guinness Zero is brilliant. I drink gallons of it and I don’t fall over. We are going to set off nice and early, bit of breakfast halfway down then get planted in those bloody seats. There’s no royalty there. It should be both chairmen. We are ‘avin’ ‘em. They can bring me dinner out and I’ll have it on me lap.”

You can take the lad out of Oldham, etc. Rothwell is also known as the oldest man to row solo across the Atlantic.

Promotion back to the EFL is worth around £1m the winner in pyramid cash and a percentage of Premier League broadcast handouts. Since it cost more than 10 times that to save the Premier League founder member, which lost £3.2m in the last financial year with liabilities of £10m, Oldham have to find other ways to make ends meet.

Thus the real value in returning to football’s elite is to reinforce the messaging at an upwardly mobile club with expansionist plans. Oldham is already in receipt of a £5m grant from the government’s Community Regeneration Fund to develop Boundary Park into a new educational hub, SportsTown, ultimately aimed at delivering university status to the town.

In the autumn 12 undergraduates will begin sports-related degree courses at the Boundary Park site for the first time, a rapid progression following the leap into education just two years ago, when 44 students enrolled on BTEC courses.

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“We are so proud of this,” Rothwell said. “We are talking to the hospital across the road about delivering sports and medical courses in the near future, too. It’s all part of the plan to make Oldham a university town.

“Promotion to the football league is central to everything we are doing and key part of the plan to put the club at the centre of the community and make it sustainable.”

Oldham has a population of 250,000. Yes, it is subsumed within Greater Manchester these days, but the citizenry bordering Yorkshire in the foothills of the Pennines are Oldhamers first, with their own identity and spirit. The football team is a big part of that.

Rothwell was delighted to announce that the ticketing crisis triggered by a reduced capacity due to the closure of Wembley Park tube had been resolved and that everybody wanting to go is on their way.

“With the ticket, coach fare and a burger at the ground it will cost fans about £100. That’s a lot of money for a lot of people in Oldham. I’m just glad we have sorted it for those who want to go. Trust me, they won’t regret it.”

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