Saturday 15th October 2022 will see the last ever league fixture at Watnall Road for Hucknall Town Football Club who will soon move into to their spanking new RM Stadium after 79 years at their popular venue on the west side of town.
The club state they are ‘welcoming the whole community’ to their United Counties League match against Aylestone Park ‘FREE OF CHARGE’ with a celebration scheduled before and after the match.
Hucknall Town have enjoyed some real highs at their 5,000 capacity venue, gaining promotion to the sixth tier of English football where they spent five seasons in the newly formed Conference North from 2004 to 2009, including a famous run in the FA Trophy where they were beaten by Grays Athletic in the 2005 final at Villa Park on penalties.
Since relegation from the Conference, Hucknall have however fallen down the leagues but in recent times have picked themselves up and pre-covid in 2019, won the Central Midlands League title before a credible fifth place finish in the UCL First Division last season.
Talk for many years has been on Hucknall’s move from the now ageing and warn looking Watnall Road with works starting some time back, in 2015, on a new venue on Aerial Way.
With a new Lidl finally given the green light to be developed on the existing Watnall Road site, this has given the club the go ahead to move to a smart new stadium that is due to be ready for November/December with the first home match said to be announced by the club in due course.
Action from Watnall Road in the early 1990’s
A more recent image of the Watnall Road ground taken in 2019
The clubs new ground on Aerial Way taking shape for its 2022 kick off
The RM Stadium is over 90% complete and will be sponsored by the RM Group, a national and global educational centre based on Heyward Road in Hucknall, and which employs over 550 people at their newly built site locally.
RM’s managing Director Monique Louis stating “We are a local business that is excited to see the new developments at Hucknall Town FC, after their long awaited and impending move to a new ground. Being able to support and be associated with the club is fantastic. To invest in the local community and families is very important to me personally. The team and I from RM had a fantastic night of football recently at the existing ground and our relationship has grown from there. We are looking forward to watching a match at the new ground later in the year”.
*Main image @HucknallTownFC back in the 1990’s Watnall Road was simply grass & goalposts.
