Hope has been renewed for a football club reduced from playing Premier League teams to abandoning matches due to a shortage of players.

At the beginning of this year Epping Football Club made a rallying cry to its supports, urging the town to get behind them following a season in which they dropped out of the league and once managed to field only six players.

Now things seems to turning around at the club in its 70th year.

Businessman Chris Ottaway has taken over at chairman, injected an undisclosed sum of money into the team and changed its name to Epping Town FC.

He said: "I used to be the chairman of the football club many years ago and I moved into the Epping area in the last few years. I wanted to get back into it. I made contact and they made my chairman.

"I have been chairman about a month and I'm trying to rebuild the momentum.

"I am preparing to put my head above the parapet."

Key to this momentum building exercise is the hiring of Billy Cove, a well respected manager from Essex Senior League club Ilford.

With him came eight players in addition to two other signings from higher ranked clubs.

Mr Ottaway - who runs an environmental consultancy - said: "They will be playing at a lower level, but they are loyal to their manager. We want a squad of about 20 to 24 people. I do not have any concerns about not fielding teams.

"Our priority immediately is to get back to the Essex Senior League as fast as we possibly can.

"Together we are going to work as hard as we possibly can to get the club back to where it should be.

"Everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet and hopefully we are going to achieve what we want to."

For Mr Ottaway and other longstanding affiliates of the club, achieving success with Epping Town is also about harking back to its glory days.

He added: "In the 70 and 80s Epping Town was an extremely successful small football club. We played teams like Tottenham and West Ham in the 70s. But like a lot of smaller clubs it went wrong.

"A lot of people remember the old days.

"We're really looking forward to the new season and the rebirth of a sleeping giant that in the 1970s was a force to be reckoned with when Stonards was a fortress."

That rebirth begins publicly on July 28, when Epping Town play Clapton FC in a match in honour of Walter Tull, later a Spurs player who was one of the first mixed race players to feature in the top division.