The story of our club, decade by decade
2020 onwards
Midway through the 2020-21 season, Phil Powell stepped down from his role as first team manager, with Craig Salter appointed his successor.
The 2020-21 and the previous 2019-20 seasons saw the Gloucestershire Northern Senior League competition suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic and its aftermath, the cost of living crisis, presented significant off-field challenges for Salter to manage early in his tenure.
In August 2021, while assembling his squad for the season ahead, Salter brought former player Chris Coward back to the club. Coward, after 16 seasons playing for the club, had left in 2015 to concentrate on family commitments. Salter approaching Coward was a significant moment, not realised at the time. As in April 2022, Coward stepped into the role of Club Development Officer, and set about the transformation of the club to be what it is today.
Salter stabilised the first team, finished 12th in his first season in charge. The following season the side finished 8th and continued to improve.
The 2023-24 season shaped up to be a head to head battle between Barnwood and Shurdington for 3rd place in Gloucestershire Northern Senior League Division 2; the reward being the final promotion spot to Division 1. With Shurdington's fixtures completed, the race went down to Barnwood's final game of the season, a rescheduled match at home against Lydbrook Athletic. The game was held at Dowty's Sports & Social Club as Wall's Club operators had gone into liquidation and closed the facility in March. A win for Salter's side would mean promotion, any other result and Shurdington would go up. The match ended 1-1 and Barnwood remained in Division 2.
Salter regrouped his players and, despite the significant off-field challenges the club were facing with the closure of Wall's Club, went into 2024-25 with high hopes. The team finished 3rd, in a promotion spot and only 5 points behind the champions. However, due to two Gloucester based teams being relegated from the Gloucestershire County League into Gloucestershire Northern Senior League Division 1, it resulted in only two teams promoted from Division 2, and Salter's men missed out. The toll of the previous two seasons impacted Salter, and he stepped down as first team manager.
Hayd Rust took over the reigns from Salter, leading the team to 4th in Gloucestershire Northern Senior League Division 2. In a strange twist of fate, 4th proved high enough for promotion and, heading into the 2026-27 season, Barnwood found themselves back in Gloucestershire Northern Senior League Division 1.
A few games into the 2026-27 season, Rust stepped down as first team manager and was replaced by his assistant Dave Moore.
Crest and colours
The original Barnwood United club crest was created by Tony Brown. As a lifelong Aston Villa fan, Brown chose claret & blue with gold trim. Key elements of the original club crest include:
Trees representing woods.
An owl which is intended to represent a barn owl so that, together with the woods, this signifies Barnwood (Barn [owl] - wood). However the image depicts an owl with pointy ears, which a barn owl does not have.
A football to represent the nature of the club.
A Viking helmet in honour of the Clubs prior name.
The crest also adorns an established ('EST.') date. Images don't provide total clarity of the year it represents. Vikings was founded in 1978 and the date the club name changed to Barnwood United was at some point between 1995 and 2000.
In 2020 the club sanctioned a revamp of the badge, in order to modernise it and make available high quality resolution images. The new badge deliberately remained recognisable to the original. Notable alterations included:
A simplified colour palette; removal of the gold outline around the trees, a change of the football to be gold outline with no trim, a change of the text from black to gold, use of only gold in the owl. This reduced the number of colours from 7 (claret, blue, gold, green, beige, white, black) down to just 4 (claret, blue, gold, green).
The pointy owl ears became less prominent to be more identifiable as a barn owl.
Club crest early 2000s
