Businesses in Oswestry certainly answered the call, as they turned their shop fronts green and white to support The New Saints in their UEFA Champions League campaign.

With a number of fantastic entires from a wide selection of businesses, the task of choosing the winners was certainly a difficult one.

TNS FC Foundation’s Wayne Greenshields and Luke Barry went around town last Friday, to pick the three winning entries.

In first place, winning two complimentary JD Welsh Premier League home season tickets, was The George Pub with a number of TNS shirts made up the centrepiece of their display.

“I decided to take part in the green and white competition because I like to support the local team,” said Sally, the pub’s landlord.

“With TNS playing in the Champions and Europa Leagues, it’ll be good advertising for the club and good advertising for us as well.

“The items that make up our display were donated by Luke and Wayne from the team, so I decided to put it all up in the windows so it stands out to passers by near the marketplace.

“We’ve had lots of people impressed with it and quite a few have have said that it’s the best one that they’ve seen.”

Runners-up Lawrence’s Newsagents also put together an impressive display, winning them four standard tickets to our next European match.

Jenny, who works at the store said: “We entered as we support TNS quite well and have some of our bosses’ children playing football in the club’s Academy set-up. It’s good to get the word out about the game and what they’ve got going on.

“We’ve got a very lovely girl named Gabby who’s sorted our window display, designing it and putting it all up.

“She deserves all of the plaudits for it – she’s done such a fantastic job."

Third place was given to Liberty Travel, who win four complimentary hospitality tickets to a JD Welsh Premier League game of their choice.

“At Liberty Travel, we do all of the planning for The Saints as part of their European adventures,” said employee, Helen.

“We thought we’d get behind the club and enter the competition. Hopefully it can spur them on to make further progress in Europe.

“The items in our window display came in a kit that was provided to us and some of the other items, like the football and goalkeeper gloves, have come from home.”

The idea for the competition came from TNS’ fan engagement manager, Wayne Greenshields, who wanted to see the whole town turn out to support The Saints.

“The Champions League should be the biggest thing happening in Oswestry and I think everyone in the town should be getting behind the club,” he said

“This competition was a chance to and get the whole town involved and I think it’s been really successful. It’s the first year we’ve tried it and we’ve got to work in perspective.

“If it was Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal there’d be hundreds and thousands of shops taking part, but we’ve had maybe 15-20 take part in some capacity.

“Thank you to all of the businesses who’ve taken the time to cut, stick and put up things in their windows. Hopefully some of them will keep their stuff up for the remainder of our European campaign and throughout our JD Welsh Premier League season.”