Gordon Bartlett has put the onus on Wealdstone’s board to provide a few extra pounds for summer spending to meet the challenge of competing in Conference South.

Bartlett led Stones to the Ryman League title without the rich backer from which some previous winners have benefited.

The board with its fledgling commercial department – not forgetting loyal Stones’ fans – worked together to find a few extra pennies at crucial times to see through the promotion push. However, Bartlett knows more hard economics are needed for the Stones to be truly competitive at the next level.

“There will have to be one or two little tweaks I think – it won’t be major surgery,” he said.

“We are looking for three or four additions as Conference South is more physical and tends to contain players of a bit more experience.

“We need sponsors and, in an ideal world, we need a sugar daddy, but that is highly unlikely to happen.

“So at the moment the focus is probably back on the board and the club to give us that opportunity to try and raise a little bit extra to get those faces in, because when you go up you don’t just want to stay there, you want to do well.

“We will do that to the best of our ability and we will look to strengthen if the right player comes along at the right price.”

Bartlett stressed that anyone who might want to throw themselves behind Stones’ efforts at step two of football’s pyramid would be backing a club enjoying a renaissance after the near bankruptcy of the early 1990s, when the club lost its spiritual home, Lower Mead.

Seventeen years of nomadic existence followed, until settling at Grosvenor Vale in 2008.

Bartlett knows being able to put down roots again has been key to Stones’ upward curve.

He added: “Since we arrived at Ruislip there has been a buzz about the place. We needed a heartbeat, we needed a home and now we have got it and it is thriving.

“Anybody who has been down here, during the last four or five months in particular, can see how far it has developed. The fan base and everything about it says ‘a club going forward’.

“Hopefully it will be the same next year.”