“Isn’t there something you can do on the back of this Gavin and Stacey thing?” Harris asks David Cole, mind instantly whirring away of possibilities as he chats with his Barry guest over the half-time buffet.
His involvement in Welsh football may well have started as self-promotion, but it is clear Harris wants the game in Wales to succeed, not just his team.
Short in stature but big on ideas, he cares little that his suggestions or opinions aren’t welcomed by all, but certainly cares about trying to improve as he watches his side try to improve on the one-goal lead at the start of the second half, relaxed as he regales while leaning on the barrier at the back of the new stand.
“I always want to win, but I don’t expect success,” he says as Adam Wilson scores a second, back from Bradford City on loan after leaving for the EFL last season. “But I do like attractive football. I want to be entertained. I’d much rather see a 4-3 win than a boring 1-0.”
It wasn’t always the case. He retells the story of how, in the immediate aftermath of his investment and the name change, TNS drew their opening seven games and lost the eighth 10-0 at Barry.
“They were the standard we wanted to get to,” he says. “And hopefully we can be the catalyst for others.”
That includes the group stage of Europe, an achievement he had long promised all those who had listen. Most, including old friend and manager Graham Breeze, had laughed.
“I told him it was a pipedream,” Breeze says of the ambition “Which he called to remind me after they qualified, of course.”
Breeze wasn’t the only one who had told Harris he had set targets too high.
“But I genuinely believed it,” the owner says, eyes fixed on the game as TNS continue to dominate. “Now we just have to work out how to win it!”
There have been frustrations over the years when domestic triumphs didn’t lead to competing in Europe. There have been 86 games played in Uefa competitions in all, but the new qualifying system and a final 3-0 aggregate win over Lithuanian side FK Panavezys three weeks ago has secured what he admits is a “surreal” realisation of a dream.
A dream that started in Llansantffraid.
“We would have been relegated even as champions if we didn’t meet the licencing criteria,” he says of the move.
“Perhaps we could have made sure the reserve team played there, but I’m glad there’s a legacy and the new team is doing well.”
But have TNS truly found a home? Does it not irk that all this investment, all this success, and still only a few hundred join him?
“Look, both Oswestry and Llansantffraid didn’t get big numbers,” he argues. “We have had as much as 600 here for games and it is slowly starting to happen.
“But honestly I don’t care how many, I care about them when they’re here, that they come and enjoy it.
“Anyway, it’s not me you should be asking; Sarah, tell this man what the club means to you.”
Harris has called over to the supporter with a lengthy green-and-white scarf stood a few feet away.
She pauses as she thinks about the best way to put her response. As well as supporting the club, Sarah washes the kits; shorts and socks separate from tops, and get the shirts out of the dryer and hung up as quickly as possible.
“It’s like a family,” she says, content with her answer, before pointing out another member at the opposite end of the ground.
Chrissie shares her own story of affinity with the club, stopping to look as Saints add two quickfire goals at the far end in the game’s dying stages. She had only gone to take her son to see a friendly against Wrexham at Llansantffraid. Almost a quarter of a century on – making the short hop over the border – and she’s still here.
As is Harris.
“He always wanted this, but I didn’t think it would happen,” Chrissie adds of the European adventure. “We got there – but he probably won’t stop.”
