YORK CHIEFS WON’T BALK!
YORK CITY chairman Jason McGill has thanked the Non-League community for forcing the National League into a play-off climbdown.
Top of National League North when the season was scrapped, York lost their place at the summit to King’s Lynn when the division was decided on points-per-game.
The National League then announced that Step
2 did not meet the government’s definition of elite sport, meaning play-offs could not take place.
McGill, though, did not take the decision lying down. Having launched a media campaign dubbed #promote2, the York owner then teamed up with Havant & Waterlooville in National South to lobby both the government and the football authorities. And by the time the issue was put to vote on Wednesday, play-offs at Step 2 were back on the agenda.
“We’re obviously delighted,” said McGill. “We only launched the #promote2 campaign last Friday and within hours it was trending at No.1. That was brilliant.
“I think everyone jumped onboard with the message we were trying to put out, which is all about fairness, integrity and sporting merit.
“We gained a lot of support from MPs, from the media, key figures from sport and the general public.
“Havant were great, but the really lovely thing was the support from our rivals. Even our competitors in the play-offs were basically saying ‘If the play-offs don’t happen then I think York should be promoted’. That was really pleasing.
“It does seem that clubs at this level really banded together to fight their corner and make a change.”
Semi-finals at Step 2 are provisionally pencilled in for July 25, but several barriers to their completion remain in date – not least the prohibitive cost of testing all players and staff.
That is why McGill has written to the National League with two further resolutions aimed at protecting relegation and promotion in the event they are cancelled. “One is that if play-offs don’t happen, the top two teams should be promoted based on league position after any point-per-game calculation,” he explains.
“The other is the permanent adoption of EFL rules, which state that in the event play-offs don’t happen the league will decide who is promoted. That resolution has been passed by the EFL and, as the National League has mirrored the EFL all along, I think it is reasonable to ask they do likewise.
“On the back of that, we launched a petition on Change. Org called #protectpromotion which has so far got 1,600 signatures.
“This is not club centric. It is not just about York City, and it is not just about this season. This is for the good of the game, so that if anything happens again in the future there is a rule in place that avoids this whole fiasco.”