TRIDENT LEAGUES STAND BY FOR PM’S ROADMAP

THE ALLIANCE Committee board will weigh up their options on the future of the Step 3 and 4 season this week once Boris Johnson has laid out his lockdown restrictions roadmap tomorrow.

Fixtures across the Isthmian League, Northern Premier League and Southern League have been paused since the beginning of November with ‘non-elite’ football forced to stop due to Covid lockdowns.

The FA have surveyed all clubs to gather views on how the season should be concluded while the Trident Leagues believe the season should be made null and void although opinions vary among Step 5 and 6 divisions.

There has been an air of inevitability over the season being abandoned since the latest lockdown began in January – and with clubs at Step 2 voting to end their campaign, it is likely it will have a knock-on effect.

“We’ve said we’ll make our decision after the Prime Minster has set out the roadmap,” Isthmian League chairman Nick Robinson told The NLP. “We have an Alliance Committee board meeting on Tuesday morning and an Isthmian board meeting in the evening.

“We’ll then come out and say where we’re going. We’ve done quite a lot of work behind the scenes, the Trident Leagues know where they stand and we’re ready to react to whatever the Prime Minister says on Monday.”

The Trident Leagues have been working together in looking to the future and Robinson is eager for next season to return to some form of normality.

“We want to work on having a really good season next season,” he said. “Let’s focus on having a really good opening day. Let’s be fully aware of what’s going to happen, let’s not be stupid, we understand there may be a further wave at any time, we’re not going to blindly walk in and say next season is going to be fine and back to how we were.

“We have to learn from what we’ve been through. We have to be Covid-wise, it may not be Covid next time, whatever comes in we need to have learnt lessons and say this is what will happen if there’s an interruption of fixtures.”