Ashley Wooliscroft joins AFC Telford

Defender Ashley Wooliscroft will not be returning to Stafford Rangers next season after signing a two-year contract at local rivals AFC Telford.

The right-back finished last season at Marston Road but was working without a contract, yet had held talks about the possibility of staying at the club.

Now Wooliscroft will be reunited with assistant boss Darren Read at the New Bucks Head - after the pair worked together at Stafford last season - with the security of a two-year deal to fall back on.

It's the sort of terms Rangers could not afford to match and, as it turns out, they probably wouldn't have been able to persuade him to stay anyway, as another Blue Square North rival in Eastwood had also made a big-money offer.

But their manager Paul Cox went away on the holiday before the deal was done, allowing Telford to nip and snare the player from under their noses.

Read said: "We had heard on the footballing grapevine that Ashley wasn't going to sign on at Stafford Rangers, and by the time we spoke to him he was literally on the verge of joining Eastwood.

"He is a player that our manager Andy Sinton had identified for our right-back spot when he took over and he brought the name to me, not the other way around. I was asked my opinion and I recommended him, as he was a player I had worked with at Stafford.

"We sat down with the player when he came to our ground and managed to thrash a deal out."