19 replies to this topic

[Phil Plantier]

I haven't posted here in a while, and I don't usually promote the Daily Mail, but this story is too good not to share:

http://www.dailymail...ful-escort.html

The 29-year-old was made chief executive officer of Mansfield Town FC last week after becoming friends with the club chairman John Radford.

As for Forest Green Rovers, the new "green" chairman has been ruffling feathers, banning red meat, redesigning the badge (after 50 years of ripping off Barcelona), and making the club basically another marketing arm of his green energy company. The club has the largest budget it has ever enjoyed, but the results aren't there yet. Probably not good for the manager when the chairman, doing commentary, openly questions his substitutions.

[santadevil]

I don't know a lick about football, but after reading the article and see this caption under a picture, I couldn't resist.

"Defense: Mansfield Town's Anthony Howell, Ross Dyer, Louis Briscoe and Matt Green will be working under Carolyn Still"
I'm sure they will be working under her...a lot.

Edited by santadevil, 21 September 2011 - 09:58 AM.

[Rick Burlesons Yam Bag]

She is 29? Wow, that life wears on you. Still, good job by her, let's see if she can produce results. That team is definitely on the come.

[DLew On Roids]

FC Halifax Town are in Conference North and chasing their third successive promotion after rebuilding from the ashes of the former Halifax Town AFC. If they pull it off, they'll be back to where they were when the original Shaymen disbanded.

Automatic promotion, which they've earned the last two years, is beyond them now. They're 13 points behind Hyde with five matches left, so they have to make the playoffs. Places 2-5 make it:

1

Hyde FC

37

23

8

6

78

33

45

77

2

Guiseley

36

21

9

6

73

41

32

72

3

Nuneaton Town

37

19

10

8

64

38

26

67

4

FC Halifax Town

37

18

10

9

71

52

19

64

5

Gainsborough Trinity

37

20

4

13

63

52

11

64

6

Stalybridge Celtic

36

17

11

8

73

53

20

62

7

Worcester City

37

17

9

11

59

51

8

60

Stalybridge's game in hand looks like it's against a team far down the table, so Halifax Town are probably only in the playoff on goal difference right now. C'mon Shaymen!

Edited by DLew On Roids, 03 April 2012 - 10:29 AM.

[soxfan121]

She is 29? Wow, that life wears on you. Still, good job by her, let's see if she can produce results. That team is definitely on the come.

Sitting 3rd in Conference Premier; no idea what the promotion rules are at that level, but 74 points in 41 matches is a good season.

[DLew On Roids]

They also put 2-5 in a playoff. There's been talk lately that if whoever finishes second among Fleetwood Town and Wrexham doesn't win the playoff, they may have the highest point total ever that didn't earn promotion. I doubt that's true (too many leagues in England for that) but it's evidence of the logjam of League-ready teams in the Conference.

[dirtynine]

Non-League Dogs

[dirtynine]

Bump, not just because Mansfield Town v. Liverpool produced this:



...but this is also pretty cool. 20 Glorious non-league grounds.

[Dummy Hoy]

How good is non-league football?

I've played men's league hockey at a pretty high level (I was just hanging on...barely)- playing with guys who played Juniors and in College with and against players who are in the NHL or the AHL or whatever, and some of those cats can really play. Is that the equivalent of non-league football? Guys who can't make it in one of the top few levels of professional sport, but play locally? Clearly for more fans than my men's league team, although we did have quite the crew of angry broads from the North Shore who came to watch.

[DLew On Roids]

It really depends. Most of the teams in the Conference (right below League 2) are full-time now, so the players are regular pros. Clubs like Luton Town and Grimsby see themselves as League 1 or Championship clubs in a down cycle, and with two promotion slots available now, they can expect to get back soon.

Players move up, too. Two years ago there was a player named Jamie Vardy at the non-league club I follow, Halifax Town, who scored for fun in their promotion out of the Northern Premier League to the Conference North. He moved to Fleetwood Town to help their promotion push out of the Conference, got noticed, and is now playing regularly for Leicester City at the top of the Championship. With any luck he'll be playing in the EPL next year, and he never played a league match until he was in his mid-20s.

That said, when you get four or five levels below the Conference, there are often fewer spectators than players, the players are pretty much amateurs, and it's rare to see players reach the upper end of the Football League. That's more like the hockey league you described.

Incidentally, there's a league in Bristol that's...18 levels below the EPL, if I remember correctly.

[dirtynine]

Nice little write up about a day out at an Isthmian League match, Lewes - Whitehawk, on a site I normally check out for Brighton observation. I didn't realize you could drink in the stands freely at that level.

http://ifindoubtwhac...ue-love-in.html

Edited by dirtynine, 06 February 2013 - 10:10 AM.

[dirtynine]

Months later, back with (bizarrely) another Whitehawk-related item.  Wealdstone's "top boy" gets feisty during an encounter between the clubs. 

 

[LTF]

Thanks for the links, dirtynine. As I've become more interested in English football, the non-league part of the game has really begun to fascinate me. I've adopted Macclesfield Town. Okay, "adopted" meaning, I added to them to the "my teams" section on my ESPN ScoreCenter app and bought a kit for 20 bucks on eBay. It hasn't gone beyond that yet ... Anyway, for much of its recent history Macclesfield Town was a League side, so the club is sorta new to this.

 

I've joked around with my oldest, telling him that if the whole soccer thing doesn't quite work out for him (being a kid, he's got rather lofty goals) he could at least play for a non-League side, and I could go over with him and follow him around from Esh Winning to Chorley and from Chorley to Crook, etc., and maybe write a (poor) football version of Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island. (Crook Town may have to be my new non-League club. The Black & Ambers of Crook Town. How fucking kickass is that?)

[DLew On Roids]

One of my to-dos when I can figure out the scheduling with work and kids is to do a tour of non-league grounds in West Yorkshire, so I can identify.  Hopefully Halifax Town will be off the list by the time I do it, but I doubt it.  

 

LTF, if you're looking for a role model, you could do a lot worse than Harry Pearson's The Far Corner: A Mazy Dribble Through North-East Football.  He hits Newcastle, Boro, and Sunderland, of course, but a lot of time is spent in small non-league grounds.  I liked it so much I bought (and really enjoyed) his similar book on travels to agricultural fairs in Northeast England, Racing Pigs and Giant Marrows.  It looks like he has one on cricket now, too, so I guess I have an addition to my reading list (which is currently a three-foot stack of books in the corner of my bedroom).

 

Halifax Town are in the Conference North playoffs and looking for their third promotion in four years to get back to the Conference, which is where they were when they went bust.  Unfortunately, Chester (another phoenix club) lapped the league this year with a team that might have won the Conference if they'd been up there.  Chester, incidentally, are almost certain to finish more than 100 points above Hinckley United, which must be some kind of record.

[dirtynine]

Yeah, I love these little non-league moments.  I don't have a club to look out for, per se; for years Brighton were worryingly close to dropping out of the FL; thankfully it didn't come to that (and things are looking better today).  Maybe I'll take up LTF's Macclesfield to have a bit of focus.  

 

If you guys enjoy the nostalgia aspect, check out Groundtastic on Twitter or on the web.  Amazing archival (and some current) photographs of the corners and out-of-the-way places the game has been played around the Isles.  I can't think of many things more enjoyable than a trip through the country built around non-league football grounds. 

Edited by dirtynine, 24 April 2013 - 11:20 AM.

[LTF]

DLew: I have that book on my sports wishlist on Amazon. Maybe I'll pick it up sooner rather than later.

 

And dirtynine: A few weeks back, Macclesfield Town was down 5-0 at the half and nearly pulled out a miracle draw. Four goals in the final half hour. These Silkmen got spunk (even if they did end up finishing in 11th).

[Infield Infidel]

I know this is the non league thread, but Afc Wimbledon beat Fleetwood town Saturday to move two points clear of the drop, and three spots clear, with 2 matches two go. Worst GD in the division.

Yammer's poor Shots however are all but guaranteed to fall out of the league, in last place and 3 pts behind.

[SoxFanInCali]

I know this is the non league thread, but Afc Wimbledon beat Fleetwood town Saturday to move two points clear of the drop, and three spots clear, with 2 matches two go. Worst GD in the division.

Yammer's poor Shots however are all but guaranteed to fall out of the league, in last place and 3 pts behind.

The season is actually over, except for the promotion playoffs.  The win today kept AFC Wimbledon in the Football League, they would have been relegated along with Aldershot Town with a loss or draw.  The Dons got the winning goal from the spot with 18 minutes left, sending Barnet down instead.

[DLew On Roids]

Barnet, whose player-manager is...Edgar Davids.

[DLew On Roids]

Guernsey FC won four games in four days over the weekend, and seven games in 10 days, to win promotion to the Isthmian League D1 South.  They had the fixture pileup because they played two league games in two months between November and January.