Ben Barrett

At the end of the 2025/26 season, the Gloverscast launched our end of season survey, with a wide range of questions for Yeovil Town fans to answer.

Topics ranged from the success of the manager(s) and some of the key topics that circle around the club at the moment, including land ownership, training facilities and long term prospects. Here are just some of the key takeaways that came from the 341 responses.
Thank you to each and every one for having your say, as ever with the Gloverscast polls, all results were on a 1-7 scale, where seven is the best and one is the worst.

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A BIT ABOUT YOU!

Over 53% of respondents were aged 54 or over, with just 18.5% of those falling into a category that made them under the age of 35.

Over 90% identified as male. 46% were season ticket holders, with that number sneakIing above 50% for those who have had a season ticket in the last five years.

What’s more you’re a loyal bunch, when asked what makes the difference for you when buying a season, well over a third of you said you’d go regardless of how things are going on or off the pitch.

Second place consideration was the cost of tickets, followed by the quality of the squad,

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HUISH PARK

Onto the place we call home, and on the whole, things feel pretty good. By the end of last season, most of you think the facilities are well looked after, with 127 of you scoring this subject a five, six or seven, that’s four more than those who scored it one, two or three combined. The mean score of this works out at almost exactly four out of seven (3.96 to be precise)

As for value for money, it’s a similar story with scores of four and five tied level in terms of responses.

Let’s get into the match day experience shall we?

Here’s some of the key scores from the survey, the vast, vast majority of you feel safe at Huish Park and that on the whole, the stewarding team are good.

Personal Safety                       ███████████████████████████████████████████ 6.4
Steward Team                           █████████████████████████████████████       5.6

When asked to break down the value and options of food and drink of a match day, there were slightly fewer high grade scores then when asked to consider overall value for money (above).
Overall Value For Money saw 167 responses offer a five, six or seven. When specific to food, that dropped slightly to 142.

Most (118) people gave the quality of food served on match days a score of four out of seven, 162 scored higher, just 61 scored lower.

Similar story with regards to the quality of drink, 111 people scored four, 179 scored higher, just 51 scored beverage quality lower than a 4/7.

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THE MANAGERS

This one might take a while!

We asked you if you were happy with the appointment of Billy Rowley – remember this was before a single player was signed and before a single pre-season ball was kicked.

Yes, was the answer – over 70% of those who responded offered the appointment of Billy Rowley and his team a six or seven out of seven. 17 votes scored the appointment below average.

We also asked you about the performance of Billy Rowley, Mark Cooper and Richard Dryden during the season as a whole, you can see below the difference between the two fully permanent managers. with most people offering a score of three for Dryden, the feeling is he probably comes out of a bonkers season on the right side of history given the tough circumstances, but that it was right to move on.

THE 2025/26 SEASON

Overall, in a chaotic season, with four managers, a little too much flirting with the relegation zone but a run to the latter stages of the FA Trophy made a for a scattered, but fairly disappointing scale on the responses for this one.

THE FUTURE

Time for a big one.

There were two key takeaways from the questions regarding the future of Yeovil Town.

Glovers supporters want Huish Park back under club ownership and want to see the club return to training in Yeovil.

The Huish Park stadium situation scored almost a perfect 7/7, whilst a return to training in and around Yeovil not far behind with an average response of 6.4 out of 7.

The questions were asking supporter to say how much they agreed with the following statements;
“It is important for Yeovil Town to get ownership of the land back from the Council” and “It is important that YTFC return to training in Yeovil rather than in Bristol”

Prabhu Srinivasan and his family, who now own Yeovil Town also formed part of the questioning, the vast majority (75%) recorded an above average score when asked if they thought the new Chairman was ‘a competent owner with the club at heart’.

Whilst there are far more of you who consider yourself optimistic about the future of the club than don’t.

The graph skews slightly to the left when asked to consider if the club ‘has a clear plan’, and how the club communicated throughout the season. Suggesting there is a fair amount of trust, and belief that the ownership is helping the club in the right direction, but a little more clarity and communication wouldn’t go amiss.

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IN CONCLUSION

After a fairly crazy season, the sentiment is definitely on the turn to the positive following a chaotic season which saw just about every possible combination of feelings hit Yeovil Fans.

Yeovil fans, or at least the ones we survey, want to believe there is a positive future for the club both on and off the field, but have sent clear messages on Stadium Ownership, first team presence in the community.

There’s excitement around the appointment of Billy Rowley and people think there remains a connect between club and supporters whilst acknowledging that in terms of communication, community and value, there’s never any harm in saying more is more on these factors which form part of the fabric of the club’s philosophy.

Finally, we wanted to say thanks for the feedback that was Gloverscast, you said you enjoyed certain content – including the monthly quizzes (sorry, Dave) – you want more from us in terms of player interviews, more space for opinions and stats.

We hear your feedback and will look to develop more of the things you love seeing, hearing and reading.

We also asked you one question which really stood out to us. Are you proud of your club?

Well, this one speaks for itself.

Yeovil Town’s route to National League Glory has been mapped out with the release of the 2026/27 fixtures.

The Glovers start with a nice local one, a trip to Glanford Park, Scunthorpe to take on the Iron – anyone who remembers out previous opening day fixture in Scunthorpe under Chris Hargreaves… we shuddered too!

After that, Carlisle and Gateshead make the trip south, the Heed Army will be in town for a lunch time kick off.

Then, on the road we go, to Barrow for some Friday night fun!- Some motorway miles in on the clock to get us going.

10 of the first 11 games are listed as being DAZN stream fixtures, with the league reaching a deal to broadcast every game in August.

Everyone looks forward to the festive fixtures with local derbies and big rivalries coming together over the Christmas and New Year period.

As such, the Glovers have a home Boxing Day clash with our near neighbours… Sutton United? We’re not sure there either, a couple of days later we go to Woking, and then kick off the new year just up the road in… Altrincham!

To wrap the season up, three of the Glovers’ final five are away from home.

We head to Sutton, Boreham Wood and Hartlepool in late March and April with a home game against Halifax in there before finishing off with a lunch time kick off against newly relegated Harrogate Town on Saturday, 24th April.

It’s worth noting all fixtures are very much subject to change, especially with cup runs and DAZN getting their mits on the big games as the season unfolds.

Yeovil Town have added an extra pre-season game to their schedule with League Two side Newport County coming to Huish Park on Saturday 1st August.

The game will kick off at 3pm and will see the return of Chris Todd who is currently in charge of the EFL side after the departure of Christian Fuchs earlier in the summer.

They will be the second League first team opposition with a behind closed doors game against Wycombe also scheduled along side the Under 21s of Cardiff and local non-league sides.

Yeovil Town announced their squad numbers for the 2026/27 season.

Given the huge amount of player turnover, there’s little in the way of headline news, but Dan Ellison has moved from 15 to 35 with defender Joe Gubbins wearing the number he also wore at Southend.

It’s the same for Zain Westbrooke who was number 25 at Scunthorpe before heading to Somerset.

Former Yeovil Town defender Roy O’Brien has been named the Under-19s manager for the upcoming season.

Part of the Glovers’ side who won the FA Trophy in 2002, the National League title a year later and the League Two success in 2005, O’Brien is well known and well thought of at Huish Park and steps into the role ahead of the 2025/26 season.

The Under-19s finished third in Group E of the National League Under 19s Alliance League last season, two places but 16 points behind league winners Dorchester Town.

The appointment follows the announcement of an “elite football and education pathway” between the club and Yeovil College. In simple terms that is an academy for 16-18 year olds which means that players will study a Level 3 BTEC in Sport Coaching & Development (the equivalent of A Levels) at Yeovil College and train several times a week with coaches from the college and the club at Huish Park. Those players will also represent the clubs Under-19s in the Alliance Under-19s league and potentially the FA Youth Cup.

Announcing the partnership, Bhavna Vohra, director and co-owner, said: “Giving young people a real route into careers through sport has been a passion of ours from the start, and in Yeovil College we have found a partner who shares that vision completely. Their team has been outstanding to work with, and together, as two of the town’s cornerstone organisations, we are building a genuinely professional environment where the next generation can thrive. What we are creating goes well beyond playing football. It is about preparing young people for real careers right across the sport, whether they want to step onto the pitch, coach, analyse or manage. This is something we care deeply about, and we believe Yeovil’s young people deserve nothing less.”

The appointment of O’Brien as Under-19s manager makes sense in light of the partnership. The 51-year-old was appointed the college’s Head of Performance Football in late 2024 and this week’s statement said he would be joined by Lewis Winter, a former Yeovil Town Community Sports Trust coach who now works for the college.

Quite what this means for the position of Jamie Phillip, who coached the Under-19s last season, is less clear. He is still listed as the only member of ‘Senior Management’ in his Chief Executive Officer role on the website of Community Sports Trust, which appeared surprised by the announcement of the new partnership with the College on Tuesday. The Trust posted on its social media channels: “We are disappointed to find out from social media about a new partnership between the football club and the college..” before going on to discuss its own Elite Performance Programme.

Cue a post on the YTFC Academy social media pointing to the application form for the course it is offering with the college which read: “This course is the club’s own and only club endorsed pathway giving participants the chance to represent Yeovil Town FC U19s.” Go figure as to what that all means – except that the academy set up now appears to be a club-college initiative.

Roy was a Gloverspast Episode guest in August, 2023 You can CLICK HERE and listen to the episode.