A CAERLEON-BORN writer has penned his first radio drama about an imaginary football team in Newport.

Paul Jenkins, 42, who has written scripts for the popular television soap EastEnders, heard Red Star Newport for the first time on Radio 4 yesterday.

Mr Jenkins, a runner-up in the BBC/National Theatre Wales drama award in 2012, has been writing for theatre and television for the past 15 years.

The drama, which features Matthew Gravelle from the ITV hit series Broadchurch, is about a bankrupt football club from Newport which takes the pioneering decision to run itself as a socialist co-operative in a desperate bid to reverse its fortunes and battle for promotion to the Premiership.

With football increasingly dominated by record transfer fees, obscene player wages and oligarch owners, Red Star Newport imagines what would happen if a club run as a co-operative managed to compete with the bankrolled best.

Fuelled by solidarity and a new sense of team spirit Red Star go from strength to strength, but as the dream of a place in the Premiership nears the utopia sours as it becomes clear some players are more equal than others.

Mr Jenkins, who is a football fan, said it is loosely based on Newport County.

He said: “It was quite easy to write because it is a modern retelling of the Russian Revolution.

"The lovely thing about writing for radio is that you have no constraints.

"I was in the studio for the recording but am really excited about hearing it on the radio.

It’s definitely something I would love to develop as a feature film for television."