So it was that chairman Don Yates sent out a circular to every business in the town appealing for their support towards the project, the response, he told the Mail, was " very disappointing."

Even so, the higher level of football appealed to the area`s football fans and their first few home games attracted record gates and although by the Welsh League gate receipts of the time £14 would not exactly knock you sideways, it did represent approximately 150 people through the turnstiles and by Prestatyn`s standards it was unprecedented.

However, a bone of contention was beginning to creep into the club - that of team selection. the starting eleven that took to the field each Saturday was chosen by the 16-strong committee (what would the club give to have 16 people on the committee today!) and each member had an equal say in who played. So, after much debate, it was decided to reduce this number by two-thirds to give manager-secretary Alf Lambert a more workable amount of people to deal with.

Lambert had played top-flight amateur football in the Isthmian League as a wing half with Dulwich Hamlet and had a stint with Southend United, although he never represented the Shrimpers at first team level. He brought his expertise to North Wales firstly with Rhuddlan United, where he enjoyed great success and then brought half his team with him to Prestatyn.

That Rhuddlan team was a sensation, reaching the final of the Welsh Youth Cup in 1950/51, going down 1-0 to Swansea Town Youth in a close-fought final at Wrexham's Racecourse Ground. (See pictures in the gallery - search on Rhuddlan United).

A pragmatic man, Lambert was under no illusions that an amateur team was going to struggle in the face of highly-paid semi-pro opposition but he was not going to content himself with bottom place either.

"We have strengthened the team a lot and I don`t think we will see a repetition of the Llandudno result (a 13-0 early season hammering which by all accounts should have been double), " he told the Western Mail.

Lambert also brought in Bill Manley, who coached army teams in Malaya, as club trainer to bolster the development of the team. "In the past the lads have had no organised training schedule but now Bill has volunteered to take over and has got them cracking properly and we hope the results of this will make a big difference," he added.

Come the end of the season, Prestatyn had held their own but endured some heavy defeats along the way. They ended up 12th out of 18 clubs with 27 points from a record of played 34, won 11, drawn 5, lost 18. Goals scored totalled 60 but 105 were shipped. Unbeknown, worse was to come!

At this time the reserve side were, to be blunt, dreadful. Competing in the second division east of the Welsh League, they finished rock bottom with one point from 16 games, scoring 22 goals but conceding 103. The following year, 1959/60 they were bottom again winning one game from 14, losing all the rest and letting in 102 goals in the process. Not surprisingly they disbanded at the end of the season.