WE’VE LEARNED LESSONS – NOW WE’RE BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
WHY ARE RESULTS FROM THE 2019-20 NULL-AND-VOID SEASON NOW BEING USED TO DETERMINE PROMOTIONS USING POINTS-PERGAME?
MARK HARRIS: No-one foresaw 12 months ago that we would have a second early termination to the season. It’s one thing being able to second guess what’s going to happen with the pandemic and it’s another thing entirely to second guess what government’s reaction will be to it.
The aggregated sporting data solution could not have worked 12 months ago because you have to have league constitutions unchanged for two years. Imagine if you had a club coming up from Step 5, it won its league by 20 points and then you added that data to the following year’s data, you’ve almost got a free pass. You have to have two years unchanged constitutions.
The third part is, whatever happens in life, you have to learn from it and although the decision that was made 12 months ago, with the full support of all three boards, was challenged unsuccessfully, you should always learn from things. ANTHONY HUGHES: I go back to last March when we said we had to stop playing. We were in a situation we hadn’t been in before where we’d never stopped a season and done PPG. It was unthinkable. Twelve months on, is it unthinkable? Probably not anymore but that’s what 12 months in this pandemic has done, it’s probably led us into a new way of looking at things and we’ve made decisions that we never dreamt we would have made. NICK ROBINSON: We had to make decisions because we had nothing to go by and the point we’ve been at pains to stress to our colleagues on the Alliance Committee is that we now have something to go back on.
THE PROPOSAL MAY HAVE TO STAND UP TO LEGAL CHALLENGES AGAIN…
MH: We now live in a world where inevitably you end up looking at the legal aspects. We do know for a fact The FA executive consulted with the FA’s legal department in bringing the proposals forward. In fact it was a question all three of us raised when the original proposals were brought to us.
The flip side of that though, and this is a personal view, not the view of the NPL, I think it’s deeply worrying where you get to a position whereby you are making football decisions based on which solution is less likely to get you sued.
WHAT ABOUT THE VACANCIES WITHIN LEAGUES FURTHER UP THE PYRAMID?
MH: This is not about filling vacancies, this restructure is about populating the new division. Anthony’s league has a vacancy, my league has a vacancy, as soon as you start to fill vacancies over and above just this new division, it creates a whole pile of challenges and I suspect if we had looked to do that, we’d be sat here this time next year still dealing with the appeals.
NR: What this is about is creating the skeleton. We’re creating the perfect skeleton and we can populate it later. The important thing at the moment is to get the extra division at Step 4, the two at Step 5 and get Step 6 sorted. Hopefully the end result is going to be better for all the clubs at Steps 1-6 and particularly those at the lower end, that geography is going to be a lot better and clubs won’t be travelling hundreds of miles.
WHY DID THE RESTRUCTURE HAVE TO TAKE PLACE NOW WITH THIS FORMULA?
AH: There will be people who will never ever come round to the way of thinking clubs can be promoted without it happening on the field of play, that’s fair enough. We made the decision we felt was in the best interests of the game as a whole.
MH: That’s absolutely right. At Step 7 there’s a huge bottleneck to get into Step 6. We could not have two years of complete stagnation. I know that will not be a message supporters of some clubs will want to hear, but we’ve also got to understand that as soon as the National League declared Step 2 null and void, and following our curtailment, there was
never going to be any relegation. Even if you found a way to push clubs up to higher divisions, as leagues we wouldn’t get those clubs back.
AND JUST BECAUSE CLUBS MAY HAVE A GOOD POINTS-PER-GAME RATIO IT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’LL BE PROMOTED…
MH: It’s an application process, the reason for using the sporting data is to give some impartiality to it. The FA are yet to confirm what the set criteria are but from an NPL perspective every club that comes into Step 4 has to be able to have a license and that really picks up on ground grading, security of tenure and some other good stuff. It will be for The FA to determine that criteria, they are going to need to do that fairly quickly.
THE RESTRUCTURE WILL CAUSE SOME LATERAL MOVEMENT AMONG STEPS TOO…
NR: I can guarantee it. In our South East division, I’ve got at least one club coming up and there may be one other, so one or two may have to move into South Central. There have to be changes but for me that is a positive. It’s a refresh.
MH: Once you know who your clubs are we then look at not only the geography but the travelling times and look at the actual mileage and the motorway system and the number of midweek games. There’s only one thing that’s certain and not everybody’s going to be happy. AH: You’ve got to have some sympathy with clubs who geographically happen to be in that situation where they are on the border of one league or another. I think that’s part of us three working together to make the system more aligned so you’re dealing with the same way leagues operate.
MH: Lateral movement is a fact of life. We need to provide a consistent journey and a smooth transition as possible.
WHAT ABOUT CLUBS WHO MAY HAVE STRUGGLED DURING THIS PERIOD AND WANT TO TAKE VOLUNTARY RELEGATION?
NR: Twelve months ago we were all thinking how many clubs are going to go to the wall? How many have gone to the wall at our levels? Not many, it’s very sad for those that have. We’ve had a couple who have asked for voluntary relegation and they’ve been allowed it.
That’s just shown us to be a lot different leagues to what we were 20 years ago. We listen to clubs. I do think the application basis was really important. We’re not saying the champions get promoted, what we’re saying is the champions and the first so many are there to be considered for promotion.
AH: We are sympathetic to those requests. We understand the problems and the issues and to a degree we have to accept clubs are being responsible by saying they can’t survive at this level. One thing I would hope that some of the cubs at Step 5 are not assuming because their PPG puts them top that they are coming up. There is going to be a process to have to go through.
WHAT STEPS CAN BE TAKEN AHEAD OF NEXT SEASON IF WE HAVE ANOTHER INTERRUPTED CAMPAIGN?
MH: We will potentially go until the end of April if we need to. All three leagues have signed up to the idea of an alternate competition should we be required to do so. But as we saw this year the feasibility of that depends entirely on if we have a serious amount of disruption as a result of a third wave or variant.
There’s some flexibility in terms of extra weeks built into the programme. It’s highly unlikely we will run a league cup in the NPL unless that’s something clubs tell us they desperately want to do. There’s steps already being taken to reduce FA Cup replays and of course the one thing none of us can control is the weather.
NR: The one thing the three of us have asked the Alliance Committee to ensure we have a ruling before we kick a ball on August 14 that we know what will happen if there is a further interruption next season.
What we haven’t decided is what the criteria will be that will trigger that alternative competition. We wanted an alternative put into the rule this season before we kicked off on September 19.
It wasn’t permitted, we were a little bit miffed about that but we accepted it. As it happens, because of the way this season has gone it wouldn’t have mattered.
I think what we want from our clubs points of view, we’ve got 12 months experience now. We’re saying to the Alliance Committee, we need this, our clubs need to see we have learned from what we’ve done in the past.