Cheltenham Town’s fans are looking upwards ahead of the new 2025/26 season.

A sizeable number will be heading east to Cambridge United for their opening League Two game of the campaign on Saturday 2^nd August hoping that their club can improve on last season’s showing when they finished 15^th.

That was Michael Flynn’s first in charge following the club’s relegation and Jaimie Henderson, co-chairman of the Robins Trust and long-time fan, said: “I think if we can finish in the top 10, that would represent a good season.

“I don’t think we’ll set the league alight but you never know. I think we can be cautiously optimistic that we will make progress and it would be nice if we could have a season with one eye on the play-offs.”

Henderson believes Flynn is the right man to take the club forward and is optimistic that the club can attract the necessary investment to help make that happen.

“I think he’s a decent bloke,” said 43-year-old Henderson, who has been supporting the club since the late 1990s.

“He did well with what he had at his disposal last season, it’s a difficult job. He had a lot of loan players and he’s always honest in his assessment of what’s going on.”

At the time of writing, Cheltenham Town’s board have entered a period of exclusivity with Mike Garlick, the former Burnley chairman, as they look to secure their long-term future.

“It’s hard to say what position we’ll be in if we have a new owner,” continued Henderson. “But even with new investment I think it will be a season of stability.”

Henderson, as co-chairman of the Robins Trust alongside Sam Nair, will have a role to play in how the club moves forward.

“We are an owner of the football club,” said Henderson, an academic research administrator at the University of London. “We own 14 per cent of the club’s shares.

“We are a group of people volunteering their time, helping the club in any way we can.”

Henderson, who lives with his family just a long goal kick from West Ham’s stadium in East London, joined the Robins Trust board during the pandemic.

“I’ve always been interested in the social and cultural side of football, it’s always fascinated me,” he said. “Not as much as on the pitch but I’ve always been interested in how everything works.

“It’s really good to be involved with the Robins Trust. When I joined the board, all the meetings were online and we’ve just continued that.

“Sam Nair is based in the north east, Leo Hoenig, who is also a board member, lives in France, while Ryan Grimmett is based in Utah in the US.”

Grimmett’s story and his involvement with the club is a particularly interesting one.

“He was tracing his family roots and found that part of his family came from near Tewkesbury,” explained Henderson. “He wanted to support a football team, saw that Cheltenham Town were the closest and is now massively into them.”

As is everyone associated with the Robins Trust, of course, and with 12 elected board members they clearly have plenty of influence.

“We are able to provide the fans with a voice at the top table and a say in all decisions made by the club board,” says the Trust’s website.

It adds: “Our commitment is to make consistent and regular investments in our club to help maintain the current success and build stronger long-term foundations.

“Trust board member David Beesley was elected to serve a third term as our Robins Trust Appointed Director in 2024, meaning he has served as a board member of our club since 2018.”

And they do a lot of unseen work too.

“We work with the club around fan engagement, we want to improve the match-day experience,” Henderson said. “We try to bring in a culture where the fans are all together. We want them to take pride in their club, to have a sense of heritage.”

That’s something that is very important to Henderson, a published novelist, and he’d like everyone to be on the same page.

A one-time Nottingham Forest fan, he became hooked on Cheltenham Town in the late 1990s in the days when Steve Cotterill was working miracles at the club, taking Cheltenham to Wembley, winning promotion to the Football League and winning a play-off final in Cardiff.

These days he “supports Forest from afar”, so how did Cheltenham Town become Henderson’s first love?

“I was a sixth-former at Chipping Norton School and living in Hook Norton on the other side of the Cotswolds,” he explained.

“I was aware of Cheltenham Town and I was aware of non-league football so with my friend Mark Stringer we drove over the hill to watch a game.”

And there was no turning back after that.

“We were immediately struck by the vibe, we loved it,” said Henderson, who added that Stringer, who these days lives in Bournemouth, is still a fan and also a member of the Robins Trust.

The vibe around the club at the moment is probably more one of uncertainty, a vibe that is unlikely to change until anything is confirmed about the club’s potential new ownership.

Henderson, who gets to about 10 Cheltenham games a season, is waiting for news just like every other Cheltenham fan, but he’s encouraged by what he’s read and heard about Mike Garlick.

“He seems like a serious football person,” he said. “He’s achieved things in the game and seems like someone who incrementally improves things.

“I don’t think he’ll make big changes, maybe that’s the best way to go because it will be sustainable.”