My own ideal scenario would be five divisions. The Premier, The Championship, The Dogfight, The Regionals (North and South), all with twenty teams each. Normally that would have meant eight teams coming up from National League football, but Bury have turned that into nine at the moment.
Barrow is an ideal example of a club who would be suited to the Regionals. They were kicked out of the EFL for coming third bottom, largely because the other clubs didn't like going to Barrow (okay even the people who live in Barrow don't like going to Barrow ……..). As St Charles says unless you are at a higher level of sport, and thus well-financed, travelling from Southend or Plymouth to Barrow is a journey and a half, especially when the fixture computer is not given flags to avoid arranging such games on a Tuesday night.
The National League itself currently mimics the EFL, so in our division Torquay might be expected to face Barrow away on a cold, wet Tuesday night in front of 1,400 specked potatoes. Nonsense, especially when you remember not every club in the National League is even full time, so some poor sod has to clock off early from work to catch the team coach to Barrow, get home in the early hours and clock on again atop of a couple of hours shut-eye and probably be expected to stay late to make up for the day before.
The trouble with merger proposals when you take them down to National North and South level is that you risk mixing together long-standing professional clubs with long-standing part-time and beloved amateur (-ish) clubs, whose aims, financial structures and facilities are really radically different.
The other problem which besets the whole of any such change is exactly the one St Charles pinpoints. Who decides North and South. Does Gloucester sound very North to you (a club with no ground that these proposals could encompass)? The crux of the problem is that we are a very divided country. The bulk of the money is down south. You could get a cluster of clubs in London's commuter belt able to get good-enough facilities, the huge population in the London area and ease of transport would mean they had a ready supply of players who had just missed out with big club's academies, together they could make a team well capable of Regional South at least as a vanity project for one rich hedge-funder living in that area.
But yes in the end small clubs regularly travelling the length of the country is nonsense. If they come together in a one-off play-off that's great, but surely we want small clubs to be able to build their finances, not dissipate them on financing pointless long-distance travel.
I heard Aldershot's Chairman and owner on Radio 4 Today and he was very gloomy over the prospects for survival of small clubs if they were forced to play behind closed doors. He thought mothballing clubs completely might give them more chance of survival. I must say I tend to agree, from the standpoint of a functioning society if we can't have events like sport with crowds and theatre then how will we ever get them back. Where will football clubs and theatres come from? They won't spontaneously regenerate like Dr Who will they? If we'd be able to say that no more than 50 people a week under the age of 50 would
die of it, would we for 2600 death over the year, have closed the country down? People don't tend to head out from Care Homes and Hospitals to watch football matches. Football crowds will be the young and asymptomatic in general. Would it be beyond the wit of clubs to designate one stand for the over-60s and those with pre-exisiting health conditions and allow them to social-distance within that area. The rest of the crowd, could just be a crowd.
Barrow is an ideal example of a club who would be suited to the Regionals. They were kicked out of the EFL for coming third bottom, largely because the other clubs didn't like going to Barrow (okay even the people who live in Barrow don't like going to Barrow ……..). As St Charles says unless you are at a higher level of sport, and thus well-financed, travelling from Southend or Plymouth to Barrow is a journey and a half, especially when the fixture computer is not given flags to avoid arranging such games on a Tuesday night.
The National League itself currently mimics the EFL, so in our division Torquay might be expected to face Barrow away on a cold, wet Tuesday night in front of 1,400 specked potatoes. Nonsense, especially when you remember not every club in the National League is even full time, so some poor sod has to clock off early from work to catch the team coach to Barrow, get home in the early hours and clock on again atop of a couple of hours shut-eye and probably be expected to stay late to make up for the day before.
The trouble with merger proposals when you take them down to National North and South level is that you risk mixing together long-standing professional clubs with long-standing part-time and beloved amateur (-ish) clubs, whose aims, financial structures and facilities are really radically different.
The other problem which besets the whole of any such change is exactly the one St Charles pinpoints. Who decides North and South. Does Gloucester sound very North to you (a club with no ground that these proposals could encompass)? The crux of the problem is that we are a very divided country. The bulk of the money is down south. You could get a cluster of clubs in London's commuter belt able to get good-enough facilities, the huge population in the London area and ease of transport would mean they had a ready supply of players who had just missed out with big club's academies, together they could make a team well capable of Regional South at least as a vanity project for one rich hedge-funder living in that area.
But yes in the end small clubs regularly travelling the length of the country is nonsense. If they come together in a one-off play-off that's great, but surely we want small clubs to be able to build their finances, not dissipate them on financing pointless long-distance travel.
I heard Aldershot's Chairman and owner on Radio 4 Today and he was very gloomy over the prospects for survival of small clubs if they were forced to play behind closed doors. He thought mothballing clubs completely might give them more chance of survival. I must say I tend to agree, from the standpoint of a functioning society if we can't have events like sport with crowds and theatre then how will we ever get them back. Where will football clubs and theatres come from? They won't spontaneously regenerate like Dr Who will they? If we'd be able to say that no more than 50 people a week under the age of 50 would
die of it, would we for 2600 death over the year, have closed the country down? People don't tend to head out from Care Homes and Hospitals to watch football matches. Football crowds will be the young and asymptomatic in general. Would it be beyond the wit of clubs to designate one stand for the over-60s and those with pre-exisiting health conditions and allow them to social-distance within that area. The rest of the crowd, could just be a crowd.