Handball team

Bala Town

Club · Wales · Premier League

«Lakesiders»

252 Matches

107 wins

66 draws

79 losses

412–311 Goals

+101 Difference

1.6 Scored per game

Form W W L W L W

In November 2022 Bala Town walked out at Cardiff City Stadium to face The New Saints in the final of the Welsh Cup, a competition the club had never won. Six goals went past them without reply. It was the kind of afternoon that could have buried a smaller club's season, and instead it sat alongside a run of finals — league cup finals in 2013–14 and 2014–15, a Welsh National League cup final back in 1996–97 — that had become something of a pattern for a team from a town of a few thousand people on the shore of Llyn Tegid.

The club traces back to 1880, though its early identity shifted more than once: Bala North End and Bala South End gave way to Bala Thursdays by 1897, and it took until the early 1950s for the team to settle at its current ground, Maes Tegid, after leaving Castle Park. Progress through the Welsh pyramid came in stages rather than a single leap — Division Two champions in 1967–68, Division One champions twice more before the turn of the millennium, then the Cymru Alliance title in 2008–09 that finally put Bala in the Welsh Premier League. Five years later they were playing UEFA Europa League qualifiers, a startling reach for a club of this size.

One name runs through most of that climb: Colin Caton took charge in 2003 and stayed for more than two decades, taking 880 matches on the touchline and becoming the longest-serving manager in Cymru Premier history before handing over to Steve Fisher in the summer of 2025. On the pitch, Mark Jones is the player supporters still measure others against, 29 goals in 185 appearances across a career spent almost entirely in Bala colours.

The rivalry that means most locally is with Caernarfon Town, the Gwynedd derby, two clubs from the same corner of north Wales pulling in opposite directions. Under Fisher, Bala now carry a Nathaniel MG Cup win from 2023 into a Cymru Premier campaign where the job, as ever for a club this size, is staying competitive against far bigger budgets.

Latest results

All matches

15 Sep	FAW Championship	Penrhyncoch A	1:0	W
11 Sep	FAW Championship	Denbigh Town A	2:5	L
5 Sep	FAW Championship	Porthmadog FC A	2:1	W
31 Aug	FAW Championship	Newtown AFC H	0:1	L
28 Aug	FAW Championship	Rhyl A	3:1	W
21 Aug	FAW Championship	Gresford Athletic H	3:0	W