Review of the Year
- Paul Armstrong
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
It might be rather dramatic to describe 2025 as ‘annus horribilis’ but it has certainly been a year we will all be keen to forget. It has been a difficult twelve months for the club – on the pitch, at least.
If we ‘converted’ our results throughout the calendar year into one season, we would be looking at a relegation campaign with just eleven league wins obtained from January through to December. Eight of those wins were obtained during the second half of the 2024-25 season with just three more recorded since August – one each for Darren Edmondson, Brian Dawson and Billy Barr!
We have played forty-one league games in the calendar year and our record makes quite miserable reading: won 11, drew 7 and lost 23 with a goal ratio of 53 for and 68 against.
The New Year kicked off at Hebburn Town and we must have thought it was going to be our day when Tom Stephenson opened the scoring with an early goal. We eventually lost (1-3), though, and unbeaten runs and back-to-back wins have been rare since.
Reds first win of the year was the 4-2 success over Matlock Town who arrived in Cumbria as the form team. Four cracking goals and a vibrant display secured the victory against the Derbyshire outfit who, aptly, had a player called ‘Derbyshire’ in their ranks.
We followed that up with a win at Whitby Town with Riggy and Dav bagging their first goals of the year and the diminutive Kai scoring with a diving header in between.
Messrs Rigg and Symington have been so important to the team and, although neither has been at his prolific best, we would have been in a right mess without their input. They have scored twenty-five goals between them over the year, admittedly six of those came in an easy Cumberland Cup win, but nobody else reached doubled figures and Connor Pani (6) and Ruben Grewal (4), who scored regularly last season, are no longer with us.
Ruben’s goal in the aforementioned Matlock match was voted our best of last season, polling 28% of supporters’ votes from the twelve short-listed.
Kai Nugent (5) and Luke Ellis (4) have contributed but our next highest ‘tally’ is the 4 own-goals we have benefitted from.
And still on the subject of goalscoring, only one Workington player managed to score more than once in a league game and that honour fell to Alfie McDonough, who netted twice at Borough Park against Ashton United in what was our best win (5-1) of the year.
In doing so, he became the youngest (16 years and 8 months) Workington player to score twice on his full debut throughout the non-league era.
That was certainly a champagne moment in a season that served up regular glasses of ‘flat lemonade’!
On a Sunday afternoon in April, we held a charity game at Borough Park and £5,500 was raised and shared amongst three good causes – MND, Hospice and Young lives v. cancer. Thirty-six former Workington heroes turned out and it was great to see the likes of Gareth Arnison, Scott Allison, Matt Henney and Graham Goulding on the score sheet once more.
Mark Fell had the left the club by then with Brian Dawson and Billy Redden in joint control for the final three games of the campaign. Darren Edmondson, the longest serving manager in the club’s history during his first spell in charge (2007-2013), was re-appointed but his second stint in the Borough Park hot seat lasted for just thirteen matches, eleven in the league which produced one solitary win, plus early exits in both Cup and Trophy.
We then won at Stocksbridge before appointing Billy Barr as Edmo’s successor and his tenure got off to the best possible start when we won our first home game of this season…..at the ninth attempt!
Billy’s impact has been very positive but luck soon deserted him and three successive defeats at the end of the year reminded us all of the tough task ahead.
One of the many league defeats inflicted upon us was an embarrassing 6-0 drubbing at Stockton Town, who then completed a double against us in the final Borough Park game of the year.
Three ‘new opponents’ were played as we came up against Caledonian Braves, Heaton Stannington and Cleethorpes Town for the first time.
And three internationals – Efe Ambrose (Nigeria), Jamie Allen (Montserrat) and Ne Jai Tucker (Bermuda) all pulled on a Workington shirt.
Remarkably, 2025 has been an amazing year for support and credit has to go to the assiduous Board for nurturing this vital aspect of the club.
Three league matches towards the end of last season attracted ‘four-figure’ gates and an aggregate 16,968 attendance passed through the turnstiles in our twenty-one NPL fixtures this year, producing a stunning 808 average.
Indeed, off field activities have been more positive than matters on the pitch at times and the television/media advert we featured in produced some great feedback.
Below first team level, there has been plenty of positivity with our U18s and U23s enjoying a good few months of winning football. Their time will come in the future.
There have been many sad moments too and several supporters and former club officials have passed away over the past twelve months. We remember Gary Messenger, Thex Johnston, Trevor Price and Les O’Neill and the rest of the Workington Reds’ family no longer with us.
It hasn’t been the best of years but that makes us even more determined to produce better moments, and memories, throughout 2026!
