Good luck, just glad it wasn't us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkaIFLHKgm4

It's a p1ss take but the sentiment is in Vera's song.

Commiserations to Jorge and Wrexham. Hope you bounce back swiftly.

quite obviuosly Im missing something as its accepted Wrexham are relegated...

but they are 6 points point off 22nd with two games to play with an admittedly inferior goal difference of eight behind Dagenham...

Dagenham play Mansfield in their last game so we can't catch either of them

Mansfield are playing Dagenham & Redbridge on Saturday. Two games left.

43pts Dagenham & Redbridge
--------------------
42pts Mansfield
37pts Wrexham

So Wrexham are down.

as I said...blindingly obvious ...

Someone a few posts back suggested that clubs have been slipping far enough returning to the 92. Not many of them, really. And those that have have tended to be those who were less established league clubs, Boston, Scarborough (RIP) and people like that.

I don't think an ex-league club (or at least a club who left the league after 1980) has ever been relegated from the conference on playing grounds. Halifax might be the first this saturday, but even they are only where they are due to a -10 point penalty for going into administration.

The Conference is coming to resemble Division 4 circa 1970. Which, of course, makes it harder to get out of. Next season there will be established well supported clubs like Wrexham, Oxford, two of Cambridge, Exeter and Torquay, York, Kidderminster, Rushden, along with whoever else comes down. As well as progressive established non-league clubs like Burton and Stevenage.


It took Doncaster five years to turn themselves around. I don't think that is an unrealistic time frame for others coming down to envisage. Which would be OK, if you could guarentee getting the set-up correct whilst in the Conference, as Doncaster managed.

Janik wrote:

QUOTE:

I don't think an ex-league club (or at least a club who left the league after 1980) has ever been relegated from the conference on playing grounds.

Southport? When were they relegated from the League?

Southport weren't re-elected. The important word here is "relegated".

Southport failed in their (third consecutive) re-election bid in 1978; they were replaced by Wigan Athletic.

200 percent has additional background on them here .

They weren't re-elected, therefore they were relegated. Innit.

However, ursus puts the timing on it to prove that they don't fulfill the criterion anyway.

boris wrote:

QUOTE:
They weren't re-elected, therefore they were relegated. Innit.

Huge, huge difference. As far as I can recall, none of the clubs who weren't re-elected since the war have subsequently returned to the Football League.

I notice the Telegraph (it was lying on my seat on the train) did a decent-sized feature on Wrexham's fate today. Then again their commitment to the lower (and non) leagues has always been greater than the other papers.

What GO said, basically. Re-election was very seldom about playing performance on its own - it was as much about how a club greased the wheels (Gateshead, most famously, were voted out in 1960 after finishing third from bottom and in the bottom four for only the second time - rumour had it that it was because the directors bar at Redheugh Park charged visiting officials for drinks), or whether a non-league team was riding the crest of a wave of popularity at the time (Hereford United replaced Barrow in 1972 largely because they had received a considerable amount of national attention in the FA Cup that season). Of the clubs that were voted out of the League since 1950, New Brighton folded, Gateshead folded and re-formed, Bradford PA folded and reformed, Barrow, Southport and Workington are in the Conference North (the Conference started after Southport, the last team to be voted out, went).

200 is too modest to blow his own horn, but he did an excellent series covering all of the clubs noted above on his blog.

Though he should add a search box to the home page so links like the one I posted above to the Southport entry are easier to find . . .

Doncaster have only turned it around due to the owner, John Ryan, putting substantial amounts of money into the club. The club was an absolute mess when it was relegated with a real contender for worst chairman ever.