Null and void has left us in a quandary
WHEN it was announced that all results in 2019-20 from Steps 3-7 Leagues were to be declared null and void, I was horrified.
To cancel a season when 70% completed was an unnecessary, knee-jerk reaction and will be quite detrimental to many clubs when the dust has settled.
I understand that this decision was predicated upon the notion that prematurely relegating clubs with positions based on points per game would be considered unfair, but, essentially, it punished all the clubs whose financial and emotional investments towards promotion were summarily ignored and further, it effectively enforced a notional relegation upon those clubs who would have been promoted at the end of the 2019-20 season (even if when play was halted, the incumbents concerned could not have been known, aside from Jersey Bulls and Vauxhall Motors).
A little imagination thrown at the problem could very easily have found a far more equitable solution, one such which I’d like to elucidate here, if I may?
Given the twin remit of suspending all relegation beneath Step 1 and keeping at least the season’s normal promotion places open, we acknowledge the necessity of increasing membership numbers in Step 2, creating cascading promotion places beneath that level.
We are going to ‘borrow’ the promotion places that would have been used to populate the new eighth Step 4 division due to begin in the 2020-21 season – and instead use them for populating this increment to Step 2.
As with all borrowing, it must be paid back and this would be effected over just two seasons - half at the end of 2020-21 and half at the end of 2021-22, bringing the preferred 1-2-4-8-16-17 Step1 to Step 6 model back to ‘normal’ just one season later than had been anticipated.
For 2020-21, the plan involves bringing Step 2 up to 60 teams, from its current 44, dividing into three divisions of 20. This requires the promotion of 16 teams (plus a replacement for Bury FC) from Step 3, cascading downward through Step 6.
An extra six relegations from Step 2 and Step 3 at the end of each of the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons will see Step 2 progress from 3x20 members via 3x18 members to settle at 2x24 members.
Step 4 will accumulate the 12 cascading relegations to ‘fill up’ its desired 8x20 team constitution.
When Step 2 has 3x18 divisions, the season will follow the format used in the Northern Premier League’s inaugural regional Divisions One season, playing 42 matches.
Suffice it to say that over this period of flux, Divisional membership numbers at Step 4 are varied so as to ensure there are no unnecessary promotions from Step 5 needing subsequent extraneous relegation.