First, the sad news: Atherstone Town of the Southern League, Division One Central, have announced that they will resign from the League at the end of the current season. Atherstone pay their players nothing at all, but still find the costs of playing at this level prohibitive. They are just about the northernmost club in their division, as the Northern Premier League edges ever further southwards; more on that in a moment.
Now to the good news. Sheffield FC, the oldest football club in the world - they rather pompously nickname themselves "Club" - have survived a winding-up petition, which I must confess I was unaware that they were facing. Club's chairman Richard Tims was quoted in the Sheffield Star thus:
"The HMRC are playing hard ball - it doesn't matter if clubs owe £500 or £500,000, they go after you," he said.
"Small businesses are stretched and pay bills at the last minute; we just stretched it (paying the bill) out too long.
"If I said how much we are talking about you'd laugh. It was a small amount and we paid it off. Small companies always have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. None are awash with cash.
There's an interesting discussion here on the way non-league football in England is structured. Broadly speaking, there is an imbalance of clubs between the North and South of the country, which is causing the Conference North to move ever further southwards. There are a number of reasons for this, of which two stand out.
One is the number of leagues at step 5. There are 14 of them; but if you draw a line separating the North of England from the South - which would roughly be from the southern end of the Welsh border to the southern corner of The Wash - the imbalance becomes obvious, despite that line dividing England near enough equally in terms both of population and area.
Just 4½ of the step 5 league areas would find themselves to the north of that line; 9½ would find themselves to the south of it.
The 4 to the North would be the Northern League, Northern Counties (East) League, North-West Counties League and Midland Alliance; the half would come from the United Counties League.
Those 14 leagues, of course, supply clubs to the three leagues at step 3 & 4. Except one of them rarely does - and that is the Northern League, which covers the North East of England, plus Cumbria. Teams from that league rarely seek or accept promotion; teams from the other 13 leagues usually do. As the rules currently stand, 12 teams are relegated from step 4 - two from each of the 6 divisions at that level - and the 12 teams with the best records from step 5 are promoted, though only one promotion is allowed per division. Ultimately this will exarcerbate the north-south imbalance at steps 3, 3 and 2. So, what solutions?
My favoured one is this - though there is very little chance of its happening!
* Merge League 2 and The Conference. No other major country in Europe has five national divions (sorry Scots) and only two - France and Germany - have as many as three. This would be a north-south split.
*At the next level down, have four divisons. These would cover the North, South-East, South & South-West, and Midlands.
*The level below that, have 8 divisions. Two would supply each of the four divisions above them. Most of these teams would come from the current step 4, with a handful from step 5.
*The next level down would have 16 leagues, instead of the current 14. The balance between north and south would be restored.
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