AFC Fylde,

Mill Farm Sports Village,

Coronation Way,

Wesham

PR4 3JZ

AFC Fylde have been known by that name only since 2008. The club was formed a decade earlier as Kirkham & Wesham following the merger of Kirkham Town and Wesham. The new club quickly established itself as a dominant force in the West Lancashire League, winning seven league titles in eight seasons between 1999/2000 and 2006/07, finishing runners-up only once. During that period they also enjoyed an extraordinary 21-month unbeaten run in all competitions between January 2003 and October 2004.

Promotion to the North West Counties League followed in 2007. Although they finished runners-up in their first season, they capped the campaign by lifting the FA Vase with a 2–1 victory over Lowestoft Town at Wembley. Around the same time, the club announced ambitious long-term targets: reaching the Conference National by 2017 and the Football League by 2022, with the latter objective even appearing on the players’ shirts. Ah, oh well, never mind…

Renamed AFC Fylde in 2008, the Coasters climbed rapidly through the pyramid. Promotion to the Northern Premier League Division One North came in 2009, followed by the Premier Division title in 2012 and promotion via the play-offs to the Conference North in 2014. League champions in 2016/17, they reached the National League on schedule, fulfilling the first of their stated ambitions.

Fylde quickly established themselves at fifth-tier level, reaching the play-offs in each of their first two seasons before losing to Boreham Wood in the 2018 semi-finals and Salford City in the 2019 Promotion Final. Relegation followed in 2019/20, but after another play-off disappointment against Boston United in 2022, the Coasters won the National League North title in 2022/23 to regain their place in the top tier of non-League football. A comfortable mid-table finish was followed by relegation in 2024/25, but the stay in the sixth tier lasted just one season as Fylde bounced back immediately by winning the National League North title once again. The 2026/27 campaign therefore marks the club’s sixth season, in total, in the National League.

The club’s greatest cup success came in 2018/19, when they lifted the FA Trophy with a 1–0 victory over Leyton Orient at Wembley, having eliminated Barnet and Stockport County in the previous two rounds. This makes the Coasters (albeit under two different names) the only team to have won both the FA Vase and FA Trophy – surely a vital piece of non-league trivia.

By Supporters Club Coach – this is by far the cheapest and easiest way to travel. For information about Away Travel, including precise details of pick-up locations – look here. For this match, the departure times are The New Lawn – 2pm, Sainsbury’s Dudbridge – 2.15pm, Stonehouse Brunel Way – 2.30pm.  

The prices for coach tickets to this match are as follows (Supporters’ Club members get a £3 discount): Adults £35, U-16 £20, U-11 £10

To book a seat with the supporters’ club discount, please call 0333 123 1889  on Monday, Thursday, or Friday at 11am to 2pm.  Please try to book early.

By train – while you can get to  Kirkham & Wesham, the nearest station to the club’s ground, from Gloucestershire by train, you won’t get back from an evening match without an overnight stay. A train leaving Stroud at 1.59pm, with connections at Cheltenham Spa (2.59pm), Birmingham New Street and Preston will get you to Kirkham & Wesham for 6.08pm. The ground is a 30-minute walk from the station, and buses on routes 61 (operated by Stagecoach) or  75 or 78 (operated by Archway Travel) will get you there slightly more quickly, and in time for the game. .A return off-peak train fare (valid for one month, but not before the rather generously early time of 7.54am on weekdays) between Stroud and Kirkham & Wesham costs around £113, but judicious use of split ticketing and/or advance purchase tickets can reduce this substantially, by as much as one-quarter.

By Road – The journey is just over 190 miles from Nailsworth and is likely to take around  3 hours in reasonable traffic.  Turn off the M6 onto the M55 at Junction 32, and then leave the Blackpool-bound M55 at Junction 2, which is just a mile-and-a-half north of the ground.  Free car parking is available on a first-come, first-served basis in the North Stand car park at Mill Farm. Once all parking spaces there have been used, an overflow car park will be in operation at the price of £5 per car.  The address and postcode for the ground is Mill Farm Sports Village, Coronation Way, Wesham PR4 3BY

Mill Farm is both a modern and relatively impressive ground for a team that has never been higher than the National League, clearly meeting EFL standards. It’s been home to AFC Fylde since 2016, when they moved from Kellamergh Park, about four miles south of their current location. The ground is part of a sports village, also comprising several 3G football and hockey pitches, a supermarket, a petrol station, and several fast food outlets. The stadium has a capacity of some 6,000, of whom one-third are situated in the main grandstand.

Last season, the average attendance at Mill Farm was 1,105, ranking AFC Fylde 14th in attendance in the National League North.

You can purchase tickets for the match here
Away fans are located in the standing terrace of the South Stand (behind one of the goals), and in the adjacent seated area (Block A) of the West Stand.

Prices:
Seating £22 (adults), £9 (under-16s)
Standing £20 (adults), £8 (under-16s)

While Fylde will have been thrilled to have finished top of the National League North last season, they will also be acutely aware – having seen the previous season’s NLN champions, Brackley Town, manage just one season in the fifth tier before being relegated – that what goes up can go down.

Some attempts – seemingly as yet incomplete – to retool the team for life at the higher level are evident. There have been a lot of departures from last year’s team, but as of mid-August, only a few incomers. These include left-back Adam Lewis from Chesterfield, centre-forward Cedric Main from Darlington, left-winger Dylan Allen-Hadley from Telford Utd, right-back Aaron Drewe from Woking and attacking midfielder Zack Stritch from Blackburn Rovers U-21s. Left-back Harvey Broad has come on loan from Coventry City U-21s.

The clear ambition of the club’s owner almost certainly means that more incomings are likely

Craig Mahan took charge of the Coasters in June 2025, with a clear mission: to take the team, newly relegated to the National League North, back to the fifth tier. He led the team to a first-placed finish – mission accomplished.  Now, back at the higher level, Mahon will looking to make the team shine some more. He came to Fylde after two years at Curzon Ashton, his first managerial appointment.

As a player, Mahan, while on the books of Wigan Athletic for a couple of seasons when they were a Premier League team, never played any competitive games for them. Instead, his on-the-pitch career was spent in a variety of non-league teams mostly located in the north-west of England, among them: Chester, Vauxhall Motors, a pre-Team of 92 Salford City, Curzon Ashton, Burscough and Altrincham. He played in a handful of matches for AFC Fylde on loan from Chester. He also played in Republic of Ireland youth teams.

The Coasters have used their current crest since 2014, which includes the silhouettes of four major landmarks in the Borough of Fylde: the windmill at Lytham; a mill representing the numerous mills found at Kirkham; a boat to represent sailing on Skippool Creek near Poulton-le-Fylde; and an aeroplane to represent the base of BAE Systems at Warton. It also includes a Latin expression previously used by Fylde Borough Council, “Gaudeat Ager”, which translates as “Let The Field Rejoice” – or, as the etymology of “Fylde” itself derives from a word meaning “field”, “Let Fylde Prosper”

Fylde is a coastal plain (properly known as The Fylde), and lends its name to a borough in Lancashire, which covers some but not all of the territory traditionally associated with the name – that literally means “field”. Two league football teams ply their trade elsewhere in Fylde – Blackpool and Fleetwood Utd. The westernmost, coastal, part of Fylde is urban, with the built-up area stretching from Fleetwood in the North, through Thornton, Cleveleys, Bispham, Poulton-le-Fylde, Blackpool, St Annes-on-the-Sea to Lytham in the south.  Inland, the rest of Fylde is mostly rural, with small towns and villages, the largest of these being Kirkham and Wesham.

As seen on the club badge – Lytham Windmill