This Map was made in connection with the Pitch Invasion site, which is featuring Non-League Football all this week. See these figures for England, here.) **(For Germany, here {scroll to the bottom, for lower leagues}.) **(For all Non-League clubs’ gate figures, click here.)Media coverage is decent for non-league football. In 2006, Setanta Sports began broadcasting 2 live matches a week, in-season. Sky Sports News shows standings of Levels 5 through 7 on their sidebar scroll, and it is not unusual to see a feature, or a report, on a non-league club, especially during FA Cup season. Then the romance of a minnow taking on a big club is played to the hilt. You’d have to be a pretty cynical fan not to get a kick out of seeing Exeter City take Manchester United, at Old Trafford, to a 3rd-round replay, then hold their own in their quaint West Country home grounds, as they did in January, 2005. Not incidently, the windfall from all this helped Exeter City avoid dissolution.
There are 24 teams in the “Conference” (as most call it). First place gains automatic promotion to the League (into League Two, the 4th Level Level). A playoff decides the second promotion spot. Last season, east London club Dagenham & Redbridge won automatic promotion, and Lancashire-based Morecambe won the playoff, at Wembley. It is both clubs’ first time ever in the “League.” Almost all of the clubs in the 5th Level (Conference) field squads composed of full-time players. Invariably, some of the smaller clubs, as well as most every other club in the 6th Level on down, field part-time players. In the Conference, the bottom 4 clubs are sent down to the 6th Level, to either the Northern or Southern League, depending on location of the club in question.
Here is a chart. ** Click on it, for the FULL CHART (Enlarged). **
There are several clubs that have successfuly “graduated” from the Conference, in recent years. I have copied a list of these clubs, from Wikipedia . **To see it, click on the thumbnail icon below.**
Aldershot lead the Conference, as 2008 begins, followed by Torquay United, 4 points behind. **Click here, for Conference standings.
** Here are 2 good articles about 2 Non-League clubs I like, Forest Green (because they are an underdog club, with a quirky ground),and Stevenage Borough (because they were shafted by the League [denied promotion to League, due to inadequete facillities, in 1996], and have overcome this.) BBC, on Forest Green, click here. BBC, on Stevenage Borough, click here.
Thanks to King’s Lynn FC Official site for gate figures…Go Linnets ! Also thanks to Tony’s English football Site, which i just discovered yesterday. It has great maps of all the lower levels of Non-League (no logos, alas) . Thanks to BBC, FourFourTwo, and Wikipedia, for information, and images. Thanks to Tom Dunmore, of Pitch Invasion, for the impetus, and encouragement
