Newbury Town and Maidenhead Town applied for the Step 6 – Football in Berkshire promotion

There are two clubs in the Thames Valley Premiership who have applied to play at Step 6 level next season. These are the Town of Newbury from West Berkshire and the Town of Maidenhead from East Berkshire.

To gain promotion, your club must play at venues according to Step 6 and you must finish in the top five places in the league. As a Step 7 league, the Thames Valley Premiership can only nominate one club for promotion. If Newbury Town and Maidenhead Town finish in the top five, then the highest finishing club will be nominated for appointment.

Maidenhead Town, most recently based at Bisham Abbey, have moved this season to Burnham FC’s 1878 Stadium in the hope of moving to the next level. They finished second last season to Westwood Wanderers but were denied promotion because they had not played long enough at a qualifying venue. With a full season under their belt at Burnham, they will be optimistic things can be different this summer.

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Elsewhere, Newbury Town has made great strides in giving pride of place to the town’s premier football club by returning to their historic base at Faraday Road and drawing up plans to meet Step 6 requirements.

While things may be going well off the pitch for Newbury, they will face a real test in the next few weekends. They have a trip to league leaders Westwood Wanderers on Saturday. Wanderers have won every game of their fifteen league matches and have performed well in the cup too. Newbury follows up this trip by hosting another unbeaten team in Wargrave.

Related: Westwood Wanderers make plans for progress as Tilehurst side search for Pyramid

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With such a wet winter, there is still plenty of football to be played at Thames Valley Premier. Burghfield had only played thirteen league games and entered March with still more than half the season to play.

It will be an exciting end to the season with a league title battle between the current top two teams Westwood Wanderers and Wargrave to be decided, as well as a promotion battle between Newbury and Maidenhead Town to watch.

If either club is promoted, we expect Newbury Town to enter the Wessex League and Maidenhead Town to be in the Combined Counties League.

Other clubs in the surrounding Berkshire area who have applied include Dial Square, Worcester Park, CB Hounslow & Abbots, Shrewton United, Hedge End Rangers, Whitehill & Bordon, Cambden United, Hayes & Hillingdon, London Fennecs FC and Kensington Dragons.