Search: ' Conference North'

Seb White looks back over the season where Gary Johnson’s insatiable Yeovil Town strolled to succes

The long-term significance
In the summer of 2002 the Football League finally approved an extra promotion/relegation place between the top tier of non-League football and Division Three. In 1987 the controversial election process had been replaced with one promotion and relegation spot between the two. Strict ground regulations saw three clubs in the mid-1990s being denied promotion, this and the increasing good fortune of non-League sides in the FA Cup saw a clamour for change.
 The decision to increase movement between the divisions has been vindicated with all the teams that finished in the top six this season now members of the Football League. Three other sides – Barnet, Stevenage Borough and Burton Albion – have also made the step up. The extra promotion place has also done those relegated from the Football League a favour with Shrewsbury Town, Carlisle Utd, Exeter City and Torquay Utd all returning via the play-offs.

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A cautionary tale of foiled ambition, financial crisis and battles with several authorities. Gary Andrews explains where it all went wrong

Plenty of non-League clubs have gone from play-off contenders to penniless relegation fodder in recent years, but Grays Athletic are one of the most extreme cases. Four years ago they came close to promotion to the Football League with one of the best Conference teams of the past decade. But what followed was a mix of managerial instability, stadium issues and, ultimately, near-extinction.

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The Conference has recently received a Premier League windfall. Andy Brassell is not alone in asking how, and why

If you thought the Premier League was an insular, money-hoarding microworld of its own, think again. Maybe. Even at its most altruistic The Best League In The World can’t catch a break from some cynics, though their powerbrokers surely can’t be surprised that their relatively recent interest in the Conference is raising a suspicious eyebrow or two. 

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Relive four weeks of statements of the obvious from the pundits, daily complaints about the wobbly ball and over-emphatic pronunciations of Brazilian names

June 11
South Africa 1 Mexico 1
“It’s in Africa where humanity began and it is to Africa humanity now returns,” says Peter Drury who you feel would be available for film trailer voiceover work when it’s quieter next summer. Mexico dominate and have a goal disallowed when the flapping Itumeleng Khune inadvertently plays Carlos Vela offside. ITV establish that it was the right decision: “Where’s that linesman from, that football hotbed Uzbekistan?” asks Gareth Southgate who had previously seemed like a nice man. "What a moment in the history of sport… A goal for all Africa,” says Drury after Siphiwe Tshabalala crashes in the opener. We cut to Tshbalala’s home township – “they’ve only just got electricity” – where the game is being watched on a big screen which Jim Beglin thinks is a sheet. Cuauhtémoc Blanco looks about as athletic as a crab but nonetheless has a role in Mexico’s goal, his badly mishit pass being crossed for Rafael Márquez to score thanks to a woeful lack of marking. The hosts nearly get an undeserved winner a minute from time when Katlego Mphela hits the post. Óscar Pérez is described as “a personality goalkeeper” as if that is a tactical term like an attacking midfielder. Drury says “Bafana Bafana” so often it’s like he’s doing a Red Nose event where he earns a pound for an irrigation scheme in the Sudan every time he manages to fit it in.

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Thirty years ago this month Mossley AFC went to Wembley. Drew Whitworth remembers the club's greatest day and the story of a once-formidable Northern Premier League side on a very personal level

Between Oldham and Stockport, where the huge Greater Manchester conurbation breaks against the rocks and moors of the Pennines, there lies Tameside. This metropolitan borough has no historical centre, being a collection of old mill towns of which few people have ever heard. In football terms it is a backwater, without representation above the Conference North.

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