Non-League structure dampens fans' enthusiasm
Conference South is too spread out
17 August ~ With the 2012-13 season starting this weekend, I should be looking ahead with eager anticipation. My club, Dover Athletic, have strengthened, seem stable financially and according to the bookies, have a good chance of promotion back to the non-League top flight they left ten years ago. With the board acting upon supporters' concerns, particularly with regard to pricing policy, only the incurably cynical could fail to find grounds for cautious optimism. Yet, while confident we'll do well, it's difficult to raise enthusiasm for another season in the purgatory of the Conference South.
The North and South feeder leagues were brought in as a half-way house between the semi-pro game and the now almost exclusively full-time Conference National, but the regionalisation implied in their names doesn't really exist.
That Cornwall's Truro City were promoted to Conference South at the start of a season in which a Home Counties club, Bishop's Stortford, were compelled to switch to the North division to keep the numbers even illustrates that a rethink is long overdue.
Geographical location will always make life difficult for a Dover fan. Though we would find the going tough at the next level, we might expect 3,000-plus crowds when teams such as Luton Town visit. While we've no desire to return to the Isthmian League, we retain fond memories of the endless stream of games against traditional rivals.
The best thing to be said about Conference South is that it is ridiculously competitive. But in a division in which so many clubs are doing well to compete, given limited resources and close proximity to bigger clubs, muscular pragmatism has become a trademark.
With no disrespect intended to any club, if you can imagine a Premier League with a dozen Stoke Citys in it you've summed up the Conference South. Some are more loveable than others, but I'll no longer be visiting a club that comes to Dover with one away fan and a team that attempts to bore us to death.
It makes sense for any club to do its long-distance travelling at weekends whenever possible. The problem is that derby games are often scheduled for midweek – those few clubs with a travelling support won't bring many on a Tuesday night when there is a top level live game on TV.
Looking at our fixture list, I suspect we'll have to work a little harder to create any kind of atmosphere, given that I'd only expect Chelmsford City to visit in significant numbers. Visitors from the North and Midlands would often ask, usually tongue-in-cheek, if we wouldn't be better off in the French league. Sometimes, I'm compelled to think that maybe that's not such a daft idea. Mark Winter
good gracious , yet another whingefest from Mr Winter.
The conference south is a wonderful league to play in , we have a wide variety of places to go although most of them these days seem to be in kent which is why i'm a little baffled about the distance that he is moaning about.
I,personally am not very keen on travelling around the M25 for two thirds of our away games , but i'm quite happy to do it because I want to watch my team , I don't ever see Newcastle fans moaning about having to go to Southampton , its just part of what league you are in.
Seeing as Dover are one of the bookies favorites this season and if Dover prove them correct then how much whining will we hear from Mr W then ?
I really don't see what his problem is with Truro being in Conference South , where should they have been put then ?
I sort of agree about the Bisho Stortford problem but seeing the FA fudged the set up of the feeder leagues back in 2004 I think were left with best of a bad situation to be honest.
The ideal way forward is a fourth league to be created at level 3(ie one below the conference regionals) giving a south east and south west leagues feeding Conference South and a north east/north west for the North division.
I expect Mr Winter would find something to whine about there to be fair.
What will be next time Mark , a late postponement again ? or lack of tv coverage for a nl side in the fa cup or having to travel outside of your county for a league game
i'll try to be the lone fan thast visits crabble from my club if just to unsure that we won't be able to whine about anything about my club as you weon't be visiting
The Conference South as it stands is smaller in area than the old Southern League where Dover fans would have to travel past all the Lonon sides playing in their own little league to places such as Stafford and Kings Lynn. The anomoly that is Bshops Stortford playing in the Conference North is purely down to the fact that for too long we have had a huge Southern bias to deal with from the feeder leaues that are at level 5. The South-easthas three county leagues supplying 22% of the sides from an area that covers 14% of the population. As a result the Northern Premier southern division reaches down to Worcestershire whilt the Ryman South is full of clubs from East Sussex representing hamlets with three houses and a duckpond and with no running water.
Conference North seems even more preposterously organised - I'm not sure Oxford City were banking on a trip to Workington when they were promoted.
Surely the reason for the 'south-eastern bias' in non-league football is that outside London it has very few league clubs compared to the north and to a lesser extent the midlands. Look at Lancashire and Yorkshire, and then compare them with Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex and you will see what I mean. This is probably because there were never many cotton mills, coal mines or iron and steel works and their accompanying cities in the home counties either.
But they have always been full of what were once amateur clubs and their leagues. When I was growing up there was a kind of pyramid - Isthmian, Athenian, Corinthian, Delphian -but with no promotion or relegation. You moved 'up' when an Isthmian League club, e.g. Wimbledon, joined the semi-professional Southern League, or when the Isthmian League decided to expand with the arrival of floodlights.
Meanwhile, as far as I remember, the only equivalent in the north was the Northern League of Bishop Auckland, Consett, Crook Town, Willington etc, which was in effect a north-east league. In much of the north there simply wasn't room for the kind of set-up that existed in the south-east. And, as Sean of the Shed's post suggests, the legacy of those days lives on.
When the Conference created its two regional feeders, the FA failed to sort out the structure beneath. Despite clubs and fans calling for the creation of a Midlands League at Step 3, the FA stated that there were too few clubs in the region with the requisite ground grading to justify it. It was nonsense then as it is now.
Had Bishops Stortford been promoted from the Isthmian League under a 1-2-4-8-16 non-league pyramid structure, then they (and Gloucester City and Oxford City, both promoted from the Southern League) would have been playing Conference South football rather than the northern equivalent.
I also believe that such a structure might have encouraged clubs in geographically remote counties to take a step up rather than the leap it can be for some. Durham City have returned to the Northern League because the Northern Premier League stretches to the south of Birmingham - that's hardly the north. Even NPL Division One required trips to Manchester and Merseyside. If it had been limited to Leeds and Sheffield then maybe Durham City could have coped better, and in time made a return to the NPL Premier and the delights of Lancashire and Cheshire.
There's still time for the FA to make amends, but their focus seems to have shifted to ideas about reducing the number of leagues at Step 5 from 14 to 12 - on hold at the moment but likely to be resurrected.
There's still time for the FA to make amends, but their focus seems to have shifted to ideas about reducing the number of leagues at Step 5 from 14 to 12 - on hold at the moment but likely to be resurrected.
This would help though - currently step five is spitting far more southern, and especially southeastern, teams into step 4 than it is northern teams. This ends up with a cumulative effect of gradually shifting all the boundaries towards the south east.
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