The New Saints

Llansantffraid F.C.

The club was formed as Llansantffraid F.C. to represent the border village of Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain in 1959, and played at the Recreation Ground.

They first played competitive football in the Montgomeryshire Amateur Football League, and went on to win the championship seven times. At the end of the 1989–90 season they applied for entry into the Central Wales League and joined the league for the new season. In pre-season they played against Welshpool Town (founder members of the new Cymru Alliance) in the "Powysland Cup", fielding six former Welshpool players. Welshpool won the match 4–2 on penalties. Their stay in the Central Wales League was brief, winning promotion to the Cymru Alliance as runners-up on their first attempt. Llansantffraid's progress continued and in 1992–93 they gained promotion to the League of Wales as champions and won the Welsh Intermediate Cup with a 3–0 win against Brecon Corinthians.

Total Network Solutions

In the 1995–96 season, Llansantffraid won the Welsh Cup and qualified for the first time for the European Cup Winners' Cup. In their first European tie they met Polish Cup winners Ruch Chorzów and earned a 1–1 draw at home before losing 5–0 in Poland. In 1997, a local computer company, Total Network Solutions of Oswestry, arranged a £250,000 sponsorship deal which involved incorporating the company name into the club name as Total Network Solutions Llansantffraid. The club qualified for European competitions several times, with their European home games were generally played at either Newtown's or Wrexham's stadium, as the Recreation Ground was far below UEFA's standards (though for their 2003 meeting with Manchester City, they played their home game at the 72,000-seat Millennium Stadium in Cardiff). To comply with UEFA's regulations on third-party sponsorship, the club were known by their initialism TNS by the European governing body in their competitions.

The club's name was changed to Total Network Solutions F.C., being the first instance in the United Kingdom of a football club renaming itself after its sponsor's name only. Following the financial difficulties of Barry Town in the summer of 2003, TNS became the only club in the Welsh league system that had a full-time playing staff.

Merger with Oswestry Town

In 2003 a merger was proposed with Oswestry Town, a financially weaker club and close neighbour to TNS, who also played in the League of Wales despite being based across the border in Shropshire. In June the Football Association of Wales approved and ratified the merger on 14 August 2003 as did UEFA eventually, despite its initial objection to a merger of two clubs with different governing bodies.

The 2003–04 season was trophyless for TNS as they finished runners-up in the League of Wales to Rhyl and were beaten finalists in the Welsh Cup, also to Rhyl.

Due to problems relating to company and accounting law, despite playing as a merged team, the final merger was not approved by Oswestry's shareholders until December 2004.

The 2004–05 season proved much more successful, as TNS won a League and Cup double.

During the 2005–06 off-season, after newly crowned Champions League winners Liverpool were initially denied a place in the next season's competition, TNS offered to play a one-legged tie against the Reds for TNS's place in the first qualifying round. After UEFA reached a compromise by which Liverpool were placed in the first qualifying round of the competition, TNS and Liverpool ended up drawn against one another anyway. Liverpool won the first leg at Anfield 3–0 thanks to a Steven Gerrard hat-trick. In the second leg, played at Wrexham, Gerrard scored two goals after coming on as a substitute, adding to Djibril Cissé's opening goal for another 3–0 Liverpool victory. Although defeated, TNS drew praise, most notably for the young Northern Irish goalkeeper Gerard Doherty, of whom Rafael Benítez said: "The goalkeeper saved a lot of goals and for me he was the best player in the two games".

The New Saints F.C.

In early 2006 the club's sponsor, Total Network Solutions, was taken over by British Telecom, as a result of which the sponsorship arrangement lapsed at the end of the 2005–06 season, and it became necessary to find a new name for the club. After a trawl for new naming ideas, including an attempt to sell the naming rights on eBay, the name "The New Saints" was agreed upon as appropriate to the history of both of the originally merged clubs: Llansantffraid was always known as "The Saints"; Oswestry had strong connections with Saint Oswald, while the club's name was already abbreviated to TNS. A new club badge was also developed at the same time, featuring a dragon to represent Llansantffraid and a lion representing Oswestry.

On 10 February 2010, the BBC reported that the New Saints had applied to play home games at Chester City's Deva Stadium in 2010–11, after having been turned down for a grant to help fund the construction of a new 1,000-seat stand at Park Hall. At the time, the mooted move was complicated by Chester City's governance issues. Deva Stadium's pitch and stands lie in Wales, but outbuildings on the site that housed the club offices are in England, and Chester City were under the jurisdiction of the English Football Association. Chester City were liquidated a month later by HMRC; in any event, the New Saints were granted a domestic licence by the FAW in April 2010 and remained at Park Hall for 2010–11 season. The New Saints were crowned 2009–10 Welsh Premier League Champions.