Sport
Will all footballl roads lead to a regionalisation of leagues?
As local clubs and leagues begin to emerge, blinking, into post-Covid football, some brave and creative thinking will be needed.
Most immediate questions involve practicalities and safety. But some – simply and starkly – are about financial survival.
Even before these dark few months, non-league life was a challenge. Right across Sussex – whether in Southern Combination, Isthmian or National South – club committees, chairmen and treasurers work magic to make ends meet, and supporters know how tight the margins are.
One issue, always in the background but now centre stage, is costly travelling and possible regionalisation.
Not such an issue in the Southern Combination, but as soon as a club climbs into the two tiers of the Isthmian League, or higher still into the National League, you are setting your SatNav to places you’ve scarcely heard of.
In politics, it’s the East Lothian question. In nonLeague, it’s the Truro City question.
Wherever we draw the lines, the White Tigers from the very toe of Britain will still need a league to play in, and they’ll still be miles from everywhere.
Most clubs in the Southern League or the National South will have at least one Truro story to tell: at best, the dawn start or the early-hours return home, or at worst, a deathly pitch inspection and an aborted journey. And then, with a groan, the gruelling Tuesday night re-match.
Be clear: this is not a snipe at Truro, not even slightly. City are warm and welcoming people and great adversaries.
They can’t help being where they are. Indeed, we should be sparing thoughts for the Cornishmen on their own interminable treks to Dartford or Chelmsford.
When your local derby is a 300-mile round trip to Bath City or Weymouth, you are forgiven for feeling like outcasts.
When the league tables were frozen at step three and below, Truro were poised for promotion, and a few quiet sighs were audible around National South.
And Eastbourne Borough were instantly spared around 14 hours on the road., and a massive hotel and coach bill.
The point, of course, is that no regionalised plan can satisfy everyone. There will always be an outlier, a Kings Lynn or a Merthyr Tydfil.
The simple issue is that Britain is the wrong shape. We should have been square, or an oblong rounded at the edges. Then regionalisation would be the obvious answer.
But geography, geology or God determined differently. The map has lumps and bumps and sticky-out bits all over. And while a new regionalised structure may well be our best – or least worst – way forward, the bits will still be sticking out.
Even our lovely county of Sussex is almost a hundred miles, end to end. For Eastbourne Town or United, a Tuesday night dash to Selsey or Chichester after work is manageable, just about.
And at those step five and step six levels, we still relish the rivalries. I cover the Sussex Senior Cup for local radio, and that competition wonderfully embodies the spirit of the county.
Can we really say the same for Bognor Regis Town, though, as they take the road to Lowestoft? Or Lewes to Brightlingsea Regent – a journey rather less attractive than the opponents’ name!
The Isthmian League, with perfectly good intentions, has tied itself in knots trying to create South, North and now also South-East divisions.
Meanwhile the Southern League – yes, that’s the one that stretches from Lands End to the Wash – has struggled to elasticise its divisions and satisfy everyone.
The semi-pro clubs may now need a radical solution. Eastbourne Borough can cope, just about, with the travelling in National South.
But heaven help us if they were to win promotion to the National League. Some of us will ruefully remember Barrow and Morecambe.
Oh, and Gateshead on a Tuesday night in February – yes, honestly. The Sports lost 1-0, since you ask, and Marc Pullan, centre-half and master baker, got off the coach at 5.30am and went straight to work!
Although Borough have escaped the Truro trip, they’ve also lost the prospect of a terrific local derby with Worthing. And both clubs have lost a bumper gate. However we can now tweak the league structure, we need to keep thinking local.
From the top down, League One and League Two can very easily go regional. So can the National League – perhaps with a creative extended play-off structure that creates mini-leagues in March and April, across the geographic boundaries, for clubs at the top. And the great FA competitions, the FA
Cup, Vase and Trophy, must absolutely remain in local groupings until the latter stages. Sorry, but romantic as Saltdean versus Bishop Auckland may sound, it’s a nonsense while local football recovers.
Trust me, as a reporter I’ve been on the dawn milk train to Middlesbrough for Hastings United’s great FA Cup encounter. And to Grimsby Town on the Rocks’ great Trophy run.
Brilliant trips, for the third round proper and the Trophy semi-final respectively – but those were the exceptions.
So folks, I’ll see you all, whenever a new season starts, at a ground near you. Hopefully, very near you….