It has become increasingly clear that planning for a different kind of future will be necessary if football is to survive the upcoming financial crunch.
Particularly vulnerable to the impact of lost revenue will be the clubs of England’s lower leagues. The fear that famous names of football folklore could disappear from the map before the end of the coronavirus crisis is on the mind of every club chairman from the Championship down, and teams in Leagues One and Two are particularly at risk.
Fleetwood Town chief Andy Pilley this week brought the conversation around to the possibility of dividing the bottom two divisions of the Football League into a regional split, reverting the league to the model it occupied until the 1950s.
Pilley said: “It is worth considering a regionalized League One and League Two. Much as I like Gillingham, I don’t like going there on a Tuesday night, or Portsmouth on a Tuesday night. It makes no sense.”
How would the new divisions look?
For some clubs the allocations into a Northern and Southern league would be straightforward. The likes of Plymouth Argyle and Carlisle United – whose fans currently make the Football League’s longest away journey – would fit easily into their new divisions with presumably no little gratitude, but clubs in the Midlands could be a trickier call.
English football in the third and fourth tiers is geographically far more crowded in the middle than at the top and bottom, with a matter of a few miles difference in the north-south stakes between some clubs. Not a problem in itself, until promotion and relegation are factored in – some clubs on the boundary could find themselves shunted into a different division in the close season if say, two northern and only one southern club drops down from the Championship.
Promotion the other way would be relatively simple, if a little more drawn out than the current format. The approach further down the pyramid is for divisional play-off winners from leagues on the same step to face one another for in a national final. Or, scratch that and send four down from the Championship.
League One North: Sunderland, Fleetwood, Accrington Stanley, Blackpool, Rochdale, Bolton, Tranmere, Doncaster, Rotherham, Burton, Lincoln, Shrewsbury, Carlisle, Bradford, Morecambe, Oldham, Salford, Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Macclesfield, Crewe Mansfield, Port Vale
League One South: Portsmouth, Wimbledon, Gillingham, Bristol Rovers, Oxford, Southend, Wycombe, Ipswich, MK Dons, Peterborough, Coventry, Plymouth, Exeter, Crawley, Swindon, Leyton Orient, Newport, Forest Green, Cheltenham, Colchester, Stevenage, Cambridge, Northampton, Walsall
Who would be in favour or against the move?
It’s hard to see which of the 48 clubs at this level could really object, if it can be successfully projected that regionalisation would be in the interests of sustainability.
The obvious problem – which some clubs would likely resist – would be limited promotion prospects. With three/four down from the second tier, it would leave the north/south leagues with only one or two promotion spots each. Not great if you are Ipswich, Sunderland or Portsmouth and desperate to be upwardly mobile.
Another, more surprising drawback would be a reduction for some clubs in the number of local derbies they play. Teams around the midlands could be divided from their geographically closest rivals if the north-south boundary cuts between them. There would be big questions too for league bosses on where that boundary should run; strictly by latitude? Or with allowances made to give great rivalries a chance to continue?
An obvious tick would be in the attendances box. With no more 600-mile round trips from Portsmouth to Sunderland or Carlisle to Plymouth, more fans would likely make regular away day jaunts, particularly as Pilley notes for evening games. And of course there is the reduced travel/accommodation costs, though this would likely be more of a pull for say Forest Green than Ipswich. But in the post-corona reckoning, who knows where different clubs’ priorities will lie?
What’s the precedent?
Sometimes the old ways really are the best and this is exactly how the third and fourth tiers used to set up. Starting in 1921 – when the Football League grew to include teams from the Southern League – Division Three North and South ran in parallel with each other in much the way described above.
It made sense back in the 1920s not to make clubs traipse the length of the country every week, at a time when transport networks were less well developed. An absolutely corking bit of trivia is that Coventry City are the only club to have played in every single division of the Football League – divisions one to four, plus the Premier League and both halves of the old third division.
The old set-up was done away with in 1958, and Division Three was divided to create the old fourth division.
