Rhyl

Bangor City away, north Wales bragging rights on the line — that fixture has carried Rhyl's identity longer than most of its trophies, a rivalry fierce enough to be called the derby of north Wales in its own right, with Prestatyn Town, three miles down the coast, supplying the sharper, more local edge on other weekends.

The club traces itself to a meeting in Rhyl Town Hall in 1878, though its own badge for years read 1879, a discrepancy that comes from a merger with Rhyl Grosvenor before the following season. What followed was decades of reinvention rather than continuity: Rhyl Athletic in 1892, a merger with Rhyl Amateur in 1898, Rhyl United in 1911, incorporation as a limited company under the Athletic name in 1928, and a return to plain Rhyl FC in 1936 on joining the Cheshire County League. The shirts stayed constant enough to earn the nickname — white with black shorts, the Lilywhites — after early spells in a skull-and-crossbones black kit and then red and black stripes.

Silverware came in two clear bursts. The Welsh Cup was won four times, starting with a 4–3 defeat of Merthyr Tydfil in 1952 and a 2–1 win over Chester City a year later, then twice more in the 2000s, including a 2–0 final win against Bangor City in 2006. Between those eras came four losing finals, among them a 5–0 defeat to Cardiff City in 1993 that gave some sense of the gap opening up with the professional game across the border. The Cymru Alliance title in 2012–13, won without a single defeat, earned promotion straight back to the Welsh Premier League after relegation in 2010.

That return proved short-lived. Rhyl dropped out of the top flight again in 2017, and the club that continued from there, CPD Y Rhyl 1879, does not carry the old company's honours with it. Belle Vue remains the home ground, a modest stadium holding a few thousand, and the cup medals from 1952 and 2006 sit with a Rhyl that, on paper, no longer exists.