SWANS' DATE WITH DESTINY

ELIS JAMES REFLECTS ON THE DRAMA OF FOLLOWING SWANSEA CITY AS THEY FOUGHT FOR THEIR FOOTBALL LEAGUE FUTURE...

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IN MAY 2011, Swansea City became a Premier League club, an unfashionable team from South Wales but a side that played modern, attractive football under their young manager Brendan Rodgers.

This achievement prompted wider interest as, curiously, the club was owned by a consortium of local fans with supporter representation on the board guaranteed through the fans' trust.

Having spent the previous 30 years or so in the lower divisions, Swansea's Premier League promotion felt like the gate-crashing of a party, but by interlopers who improbably had all the right wristbands and lanyards, despite the extreme suspicion of the bouncers.

Beating Reading at Wembley in the Championship play-off final was the unanticipated culmination of a project with very humble origins, initially centred around the modest but critical ambition of simply keeping the club in existence. Promotion to English football's top table came just eight years after the Swans found themselves 90 minutes from losing their Football League status, an ascent that at times caused heads to shake in disbelief.

Played at Swansea's beloved old ground The Vetch Field, and in circumstances so different to the rarefied air of the modern-day Championship, the desperate final game of the 2002-03 season now seems to belong to a completely different era, a sepia photograph that's found itself on Instagram.

It's proof, however, that football clubs can only bounce from one debacle to another for so long before finding themselves on the edge of a precipice.

Swansea had in fact won the Third Division in 1999-2000, but that seemed like a distant memory by 2003.

In 2001, the club was sold for £1 to Tony Petty, a businessman based in Australia, who then announced that almost the entire first team squad were to be sacked or forced to take enormous pay cuts.