“They thought I was nuts”
Mr Harris is the owner of The New Saints (TNS) Football Club who last night became the first Welsh domestic league club to secure a group stage spot in the lucrative UEFA Conference League.
The 3-0 aggregate play-off win over Lithuanian club, Panevezys, has put TNS in the draw taking place in Monaco this afternoon, with the club potentially set to meet the likes of Chelsea, Hearts or Italian giants Fiorentina in the months ahead.
It means a multi-million pound windfall for the club, which is based in Oswestry, and a boost for Welsh football as a whole with an extra spot – up to four – for European qualification next season.
“It’s been a long, long time,” Mr Harris told S4C’s Sgorio after the game. “Supporting Welsh football and being in Welsh football has been something that I’ve cherished for a very, very long time.
“I got involved with Llansantffraid in 1997 and as things went on I said ‘I think we can find a way to go and play more and win things’, but people said ‘you are nuts’.”
Mr Harris recalled how two former Welshpool players at Llansantffraid at the time – Danny Barton and Gary Evans – also thought “I was nuts” when he first changed the name of the club to Total Network Solutions (TNS), his company at the time.
“All the ex-managers, players and everyone that has been a part of this club (over the years), they can enjoy this because they have been a part of it to get us here.
“It’s been a journey like playing snakes and ladders. You can go up, up, up but all of a sudden you can land on a snake and fall all the way to the bottom again.
“I hope that we can give other clubs the belief that they can follow and do the same.”
Mr Harris is well known in the area, having been born and raised in Welshpool. He has remained local and recently invested in the town by purchasing the Pinewood building, and also the Breidden pub in Middletown.
He made his fortune by selling his Total Network Solutions company to British Telecom in a multi-million pound deal in 2005, soon after which he changed his football club’s name to The New Saints (retaining TNS) and switching to Oswestry’s Park Hall.
In 2013, Mr Harris and Roland Pickstock, another local businessman, co-founded SiFi Networks to provide privately funded open access, city-wide fibre networks in the United States.
In 2021, Wikipedia states that the company received around $1 billion from Patrizia and Dutch pension investment fund, APG, to grow the company.
Mr Harris told Sgorio last night that he may be in the USA for meetings when one of the Conference League matches will take place, but would be “banging on the door” of somewhere to show the match.
Last year MyWelshpoolTV interviewed Mr Harris about his plans for the Pinewood, The report can be watched here.
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