An exclusive interview with Bath City FC's Chairman and Community Director at Twerton Park.
It is a cold but sunny November Tuesday afternoon when I meet David McDonagh, Bath City FC Chairman, and Dan Smith, the club’s community director, at their Twerton Park home.
Preparations are busily being made for that day’s trip to local seaside town, Weston Super-Mare, with the club kitman, sporting an all black Bath City tracksuit and wooly hat, jokingly asking David for a bigger van as he packs the club’s Citroen Berlingo full with all the match day essentials for that day’s game against their Somerset rivals.
Bath City FC were first established all the way back in 1889, and despite having never played league football in their 132 year history, can call their 8,800 seater stadium a ‘football league ground’ with local side, Bristol Rovers, playing their football at Twerton Park for a period of 10 years when they were in English football’s third division.
It is clear that this is an old school stadium if there ever was one. Nestled in the neighbourhood of Twerton, the Romans, as Bath City FC are colloquially called due to the city’s Roman past, are approaching almost 100 years in their understated but quaint matchday home.
David greets me in the club’s finance department where himself and one of the club’s three minority shareholders are busy at work. Almost all of Bath City FC’s staff are voluntary including the board, and crucially meant to be part-time. However, David quickly adds, with a wry smile, that many of those in roles across the club work it like a full-time position but that its worth all the long hours when he sees the smiles of match-going fans.
Despite their long history, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the Romans, with the 2014-15 season seeing the club’s finances reach breaking point as spiralling debt and low average attendances plunged the club into financial difficulties.
However, with the help of the local community, British film director Ken Loach and Manchester United’s Eric Cantona - an unlikely mix of characters - Bath’s beloved National League South side would be saved.
In the summer of 2015, Bath City Supporters Society had launched the “Big Bath City Bid” to crowdfund cash for a fan takeover, with the support of lifelong fan, Ken Loach, and four time Premier League champion, Cantona, who had starred in Loach’s 2009 “Looking for Eric” film, the group aimed to raise three quarters of a million pounds to buy the club.
Despite falling short of the initial target, the supporters society raised over £300,000 which was enough to buy a majority share of 54%, and in May 2017, the group completed the club’s move to community ownership, with a new fan-appointed board of directors taking control of the club.
David, who was elected chair in the summer of 2025 and who has been coming to games at Twerton Park since he was an 8 year-old boy, describes how the club’s finances are now in a much stronger position, with the previous board working to almost double the club’s turnover whilst attendances grew to an average of 1250 over the 2024/25 season from a previous low of 600.
The club have also taken on a much stronger role in the community since fan ownership, with the club’s foundation running many programs focused at getting people active as well as programmes to combat loneliness, with “Reconnecting Twerton” aiming to bring local people together in a neighbourhood classed as an area of deprivation.
Partnerships with the Roper Trust to provide tickets to families who wouldn’t usually be able to afford trips to watch the football as well as student nights, in which Twerton Park becomes the cheapest place to have a drink on a weekday night throughout the city, have resulted in burgeoning attendances. Resulting in a massive turnaround from the spell previous to fan ownership, when the club, over the space of five years, saw only two matchdays where more than 1000 people turned up.
Dan Smith, the club’s community director, describes how community outreach has been key to getting people back involved with the club, and explains how “people feel that the club is more than just football”.
From Maine Road relics to slanting stands
As we head out to Twerton Park’s main stand and look out over the pitch, David draws my attention to the sky blue seats behind us, at odds with the rest of the darker blue seats. He explains how they were gifted to the club by former Bath City player and Manchester City legend, Tony Book, who passed away at the beginning of this year at the age of 90.
Tony Book, cousin to John Reynolds, one of Bath City’s current directors, made over 387 appearances for the Romans, captaining them to their first ever Southern League title in 1960. In 1963, the player would depart to follow his manager, Malcolm Allison, first to Canada then to Plymouth Argyle before the pair joined Manchester City in 1963.
Book, along with ex-Romans manager, Allison, would go on to win every domestic honour as well as the European Cup Winners Cup, with Book also being named the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year in 1969 before taking up the role of Honorary President of Manchester City and Life President of their Official Supporters Club in his retirement. However, the star did not forget his Somerset roots and returned 400 of Maine Road's seats to Twerton Park when the Sky Blues moved to the Etihad.
Across the other side of the pitch from the Maine Road relics lies another intriguing detail to Twerton Park. Bath City’s home was carved out from a hillside and with 1931 construction standards not quite representing the same awe-inspiring designs or engineeringly sound plans of 21st century stadiums, an eye-catching slant has been left in what adds another dimension to a characterful and colourful ground.
While the Romans used to own the land behind the stadium, the club was forced to sell the land to generate much needed funds for the club, with houses which overlook the ground subsequently built on what is now ironically called “Freeview Road”, providing a comfortable view for those rainy winter nights of football for the lucky inhabitants.
A local outlook but a global fanbase
One of the things David is most keen to show me when I arrive is Bath City’s brand new third kit. A black and gold strip, the shirt features an aerial view of Bath from above, a clever design which showcases the roots of the club throughout the city.
David is hoping that this new shirt will be the key to expanding the visibility and profile of the club throughout the historically rugby-focused city, something he labels as one of his key aims.
With the shirt set to be stocked in John Moores sports shop in the centre of the city, David also hopes that tourists will look to buy the shirt as memorabilia from their trip to Bath with current tourists tending to having to resort to buying Premier League shirts due to the lack of a local football shirt being sold.
While there might be problems in establishing the Romans within the city walls, David explains how the club has already began to build a global fanbase, with football fans visiting the club as a result of experiences on the game Football Manager.
David laughs as he explains how a fan visited from Spain after taking Bath City to the Premier League and winning the European Cup, with a French fan also visiting to complete his collection of the Romans’ shirts after also having a similar experience on the computer game.
David is also keen to describe how the club receive regular visitors from Calcio Lecco, a northern Italian and Serie-C based side, who have a unique friendship with Bath City, after the two clubs first played each other in the semi-final of an Anglo-Italian Cup in 1977.
David adds that the club has shipped shirts all over the world, from the United States to Australia, and adds that Football Manager’s development for next year, which will add Twerton Park and the club’s sponsors to the game, bodes well for his club’s visibility.
A trip to Wembley on the horizon for Bath City?
Bath City currently sit in 16th position in National League South with an action packed league often resulting in the club playing up to 60 games a season when factoring in Somerset Cup, FA Trophy and FA Cup games as well as home and away fixtures in what is a 24-team league.
While many clubs in National League South have become professional outfits, with paid staff, advanced training facilities and ballooning budgets, Bath City have had to contend with a far smaller set of funds - representative of its turnover of just £1 million annually.
A squad of 17 will be asked to represent the Romans throughout this season - an impressive feat when other National League South clubs can regularly call upon squads of 25.
A busy pre-Christmas period will see Bath City take on Enfield Town, Maidstone United and Salisbury in National League South before their third round FA Trophy tie sees them play against Dorking Wanderers - a club infamous for their manager-chairman, Mark White, and his social media page ‘Bunch of Amateurs’ that has almost 500,000 followers on TikTok.
David praised White’s work within amateur and grassroots football as vital, helping to grow the visibility of non-league football, despite his amusing description of the Dorking coach as a ‘Marmite figure’.
Community Director, Dan, added that Bath City often expect a ‘beefy game’ with the Surrey-based side, demonstrated by the fact that their regular shot stopper, Harvey Wiles-Richards, was sent off in the last fixture between the two before the replacement goalkeeper was then sent off minutes later, seeing Bath play the remaining minutes with just 9 men.
However, there should be incentive a plenty for Bath City to take the game to Dorking, with a victory in the competition's showpiece Wembley final offering a £60,000 prize pot - one-tenth of Bath City's annual player budget.
While Bath City’s trip to Dorking Wanderers is an away game, David described how the busy schedule sees a lot of home games for fans to come and show their support, with an upcoming student event scheduled in for early next year to welcome another potentially record breaking crowd to Bath City’s characterful Twerton Park.
The photos for this article were provided by Bath City FC.