“It was always an uphill task”: Leamington FC relegated from National League North for second time in four years

Leamington FC’s fate in the National League North has been confirmed in dismal fashion, after five straight defeats condemned the Brakes to their second relegation in four years.

Having narrowly escaped the drop last season after coming up from the Southern League in 2024, it has been a punishing year for the gold-and-blacks. January saw the club lose veteran manager Paul Holleran, who departed over health reasons after a monumental 16 years in charge, but also after a 16-game winless run in the league that had left Leamington anchored to the bottom of the table.

Holleran’s interim successor, club academy coach Chris Knott, proved unable to turn around form, with the Brakes under his watch taking just two wins and three draws from 13 games in charge. Callum Easterlow, local manager of Step 4 side Racing Club Warwick, was finally appointed on 10 March, the same day Leamington were hammered 5–1 by fellow relegation rivals Hereford.

Leamington’s side collapsed to a 5–2 defeat at home, […] consigning the Brakes to Step 3 football 

Despite abject form, survival remained in the hands of the club, who held a game in hand over 20th-placed Oxford City, the last team above the relegation zone. Three further defeats, all losses by a single-goal margin, squandered this advantage, while Oxford’s Hoops achieved back-to-back wins. Leamington headed into a midweek fixture on 24 March twenty points from safety, with just 21 points available. Their opponents, King’s Lynn Town, had first sent the Brakes into the relegation zone back in November.

Under this pressure, Leamington’s side collapsed to a 5–2 defeat at home, conceding four goals in the first half amid heavy rain and a nearly silent stadium. Heroics in the final ten minutes, including first goals for new signings Eric Yahaya and I-Lani Edwards, were not enough to avoid the inevitable. The full-time whistle consigned the Brakes to Step 3 football once again, with a morose Easterlow bemoaning “probably the worst performance” he’d seen since taking the job. Long-suffering supporters of the club had made their own unhappiness clear by voting with their feet: just 343 people turned up to a positively cavernous Your Co-op Community Stadium.

Graphic: Martin Day / The Boar

Expectations will be higher for next year – Leamington cruised out the Southern League Premier Division in only one season when last relegated in 2023. That they only managed two seasons at this level this time speaks to deeper issues, however, despite Easterlow’s peeving that survival was “always an uphill task”.

The club’s long-term ambitions are as high as any club, with long-serving Chairman Jim Scott public about his hopes to one day reach the English Football League. Plans for an impressive-looking new 4,000-seater stadium form a key part of this, but the timeline remains uncertain, the date of opening having drifted from July 2028 to May 2029, and potentially as late as 2031.

The departure of Holleran, who led the club up through two levels of the football pyramid during his 789 games in charge, raises the spectre of regression for Leamington FC. One wonders how much longer the 71-year-old Scott, who has been with the Brakes for even longer than Holleran, will hang around for. The 2026 season looks set to represent a significant fresh start for the club, the chance to bring in new talent and a new managerial approach.

With that inevitably comes risk, but already the green shoots of renewal can be seen poking out the ashes of this season. Facing Peterborough Sports last week – admittedly only one place above Leamington, and with just two less losses than the already relegated side – the gold-and-blacks came from behind to win 4–2, only their sixth victory of the season. With pendular contrast to his last press conference, manager Easterlow praised the team’s performance as “some of the best since I came in”. The prospect of what the Brakes can achieve in these last four games of the season shorn of the pressure of the relegation battle should turn heads, for those not now mulling the unique appeal of Stratford, Worcester, and Banbury away next year.