Aberystwyth Town

Aberystwyth Town's one major national title still carries a first: in 1900 the club beat Druids 3–0 in the final of the Welsh Cup, becoming the first side from mid-Wales to lift it. The run cost more than it earned. The club spent beyond its means to field that team, and the years after the final brought a financial crisis that scattered the squad and dragged results down for a decade. Three further Welsh Cup finals followed much later, in 2009, 2014 and 2018, and Aberystwyth lost all three, most heavily 1–4 to Connah's Quay Nomads. History repeated the 1900 pattern almost exactly in 2004: a European run through the UEFA Intertoto Cup, reached off the back of a cup final appearance, ran up costs the club couldn't sustain, and the manager, Barry Powell, was sacked once the bills came in.

The club was founded in 1884 by the Hughes brothers, one of whom, John Hughes, won two caps for Wales while playing for the side in the 1870s. Aberystwyth kept mostly to friendlies until 1896. When the League of Wales formed in 1992, Aberystwyth was one of its founding members, and along with Bangor City and Newtown it never dropped out of the top division from that first season onward. That run ended in 2025, when the club was relegated to Cymru South after 33 straight seasons in the top flight — its first relegation in its history.

Park Avenue holds 1,980, with 985 of those seated across stands including the Dias and Rhun Owens ends. The goalscoring extremes on record are wide apart: a 21–1 win over Machynlleth in 1934 and a 20–1 defeat of local rivals Caersws in 1962, a fixture still played today as the Mid Wales Derby. Goalkeeper Leigh Richmond Roose, a Wales international, turned out for the club in that title-winning year of 1900 — the same season the club first learned what a trophy could cost.