Swindon Town hit the jackpot with West Brom transfer decision - It led to them unearthing a gem | OneFootball

Swindon Town dipped down into the non-league game in 2009 and ended up with a striker who would net them a huge profit.

After a mid-table finish in League One in 2008-09, Swindon Town needed to bring some funds into the club - and they ended up hitting the jackpot not once, but twice in short succession.

The Robins had been promoted from League Two two years earlier, but their two seasons back in League One had ended with the Wiltshire side finishing in 13th and 15th place in the table.

Fortunately, they had a means of funding any changes that they wanted to make. They'd signed Simon Cox from Reading at the start of 2008 for £150,000 off the back of a successful loan spell with the club, and the foward's form had done enough to attract the interest of other clubs.

In July 2009, Swindon sold Cox to West Bromwich Albion for £1.9 million, marking more than a ten-fold profit on what they'd paid for him 18 months earlier, and their attention accordingly switched to the question of who they could bring in as a replacement for Cox, who'd struck up a fruitful attacking partnership with Billy Paynter, who would be staying with the club.

Charlie Austin was a surprise replacement for Simon Cox at Swindon Town - It would be a genius move

Despite Swindon's mid-table finish in 2009, Cox's 29 goals in 45 third tier matches secured his move higher up the pyramid to West Brom, and secured a seven-figure package for the County Ground outfit.

Cox's replacement though came from a surprising source, and it didn't come immediately.

Several loanees were brought in to try and fill the void left by Cox - Tope Obadeyi arrived from Bolton Wanderers, Alex Revell joined from Southend United and Celtic's Ben Hutchinson was added, yet none could hold a candle to a non-league forward who would sign in early October.

Charlie Austin had been a late developer. Rejected by Reading at 15 for being too small, by the time he was 20, he was 6ft 2in tall, working as a bricklayer, and scoring goals for fun for Poole Town, as his team won the Wessex League title by 15 points, scoring 144 goals in the process.

Throughout the 2008-09 season, he scored 48 times for them in 42 matches, the sort of figures that would obviously attract the attention of professional clubs. He was offered a trial with the club and scored a hat-trick for them in a reserve team match, and that was enough to persuade Swindon to pay Poole an undisclosed fee to take the striker to The County Ground on a permanent basis.

Austin made his league debut for Swindon from the bench away to Norwich City on October 24, 2009, and his full debut for them four weeks later away to Carlisle United, scoring for them just three minutes into the game. Three days later, he made his home debut for them against Huddersfield Town and scored the winning goal in a 2-1 win, and it was the start of something pretty special.

Charlie Austin's first stint at Swindon Town was brief, but it was a jackpot-hitting stay

If anything, Austin linked up even better with Billy Paynter than Simon Cox had. The 2009-10 season saw both Austin and Paynter catch fire, with target man Paynter ending the season with 29 goals in 50 appearances while Austin managed 20 in 38.

Swindon finished the season in fifth place in the League One table, managing to secure a place in the play-offs. In the semi-finals, Austin scored the winning goal in a 2-1 win against Charlton Athletic in the first leg, and the Robins secured a place at Wembley with a penalty shootout win after losing the return match by the same score.

The season, however, ended in disappointment for Swindon when Millwall beat them 1-0 in the play-off final, with Austin going through on goal in the second half with his side behind in the contest - only for the ball to bobble on the Wembley pitch before his strike went high and wide of the Lions goal.

By the end of the following January's transfer window, both Paynter and Austin had left Swindon Town.

Paynter's contract was up after the loss to Millwall, and he rejected a new one, preferring to move to Leeds United instead. Austin missed the start of the season with a dislocated shoulder, but while he was still scoring goals, Swindon couldn't replicate their form from the previous season and collapsed down the league table and into a fight to stay up.

Austin's goals - he ended up scoring 17 in 27 appearances for Swindon in the 2010-11 season - were again attracting the attention of bigger clubs, and in January 2011, frustrated by the club turning down bids for him and wanting to play at a higher level, he submitted a transfer request.

And at the very end of the transfer window, Burnley had an offer accepted for what was reported as around £1.2 million, rising to £2 million, and the player moved up to the Championship.

Austin's departure was the final nail in the coffin of Swindon's chances of staying in League One in the 2010-11 season. They won just three more games that season and were relegated in bottom place in the table. Austin, meanwhile, would go on to play Premier League football for Queens Park Rangers, Southampton and West Bromwich Albion.

This relegation only turned out to be a temporary embarrassment for Swindon Town. They bounced back to League One as champions at the first attempt in 2012. And while Charlie Austin's stay with the club was relatively brief, it had a significant effect on their bank account. Having turned a big profit on the buying and selling of Simon Cox, they managed the same trick with Austin.

The fee that Swindon paid Poole Town has never been disclosed, but we can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that it was only a fraction of what they sold him to Burnley for, meaning that they profited both from the player and his predecessor. Add to this the 60 goals he scored for them in 132 appearances for the club in all competitions, and he represented a very handsome profit for them indeed.