This week’s newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Dick McKinnon.
Scaling the Pyramid
Ah, the glorious and unmatched depth of English football. Plug an ear or two from the incessant noise and you’ll see that what we have here is worth celebrating, really. As a country we have a freakish obsession with the game – or, more specifically with going to the game.
The term “football nation” can mean many things. Even now you’ve probably found yourself picturing one of them. Maybe it’s Brazil, stylish and successful. Or Argentina and its titanic little champions of the world. Fussball. Calcio. Le Foot.
Despite its relative paucity of international championships, England stacks up rather well in a comparison against any of them. Codifying and exporting the game around the world is part of it, certainly, but history is history.
Here, now, today, English football is a remarkable social and cultural phenomenon that should be the envy of the world. No study or book will ever capture it all, so wide and deep is its reach. The English might never be football’s leading global force on the pitch. But we’re world champions of being there, wherever there is, and whatever the level.
The Premier League has an average attendance of more than 40,000 this season, with Manchester United at the top with over 74,000 and AFC Bournemouth enjoying top flight life with more than 10,000. It’s changed a bit down in my home town since the days of Vince Bartram and Scott Mean, that’s for sure.
But we go to non-league in numbers too. It’s extraordinary. Wrexham might be boosted by interest in their owners but their average this season in the fifth tier isn’t far short of Bournemouth’s in the first.
It doesn’t stop there. Let’s look at a sample from lower down.
Malvern Town and Worcester Raiders (Hellenic League Premier Division, ninth tier) are both averaging more than 250. Saffron Walden Town at the same level? 300. The Southern Counties East League at the same level again has two averaging over 400. The next tier up has countless teams who attract crowds in the high hundreds and even into four figures, and that’s without taking into account the handful of outliers who pack in even more.
The English football league system is a thing of beauty. It has eleven defined tiers, the Premier League being perched at the summit like a particularly expensive Christmas tree angel. Tiers two to four are the three divisions of the EFL. Because that’s how a league system works.
Non-League is broken into its own steps. Steps 1 and 2 are the National League and its North/South second divisions. Step 3 and 4 are the component divisions of four leagues: the Northern League, Southern League (Central and South) and Isthmian League. Still with me? That’s tier seven and eight.
Tier 9 – Step 5 – is my bread and butter. It consists of sixteen leagues, of which two apiece belong to the United Counties League and the Combined Counties League. If you paid attention during the FA’s hilariously negligent handling of the pandemic, you’ll know that Step 6 is significant as the bottom of the National League System (I won’t go into that; trust me) but Step 7, tier 11, is recognised as the last structured level of the pyramid.
See? Glorious.
In the first thirteen days of 2023 I sampled the lot. Not every tier, you understand – I’m a married man with a job, I’d never get permission for such a triumphant escapade – but the top and very bottom of English football’s famed pyramid: the Premier League and the seventh step of non-league.
I want to make clear that I’m aware that these are not the actions of a normal person. This is geekery. Nerdism. Dorking. (Okay, not that last one.) But I find it hard to wrap my brain around the idea that I’d ever pick one flavour of football entirely over another.
Nah, mate. I’m hungry. I’m going to shove it all into my gluttonous boat race like some sort of football Cookie Monster. Foooooooty!
And so it came to pass that my sporting year began with a thoroughly enjoyable visit to Walsall on New Year’s Day followed by Kenilworth Sporting versus Coventry Rangers on 2nd January.
There’s no love lost between those Midland Football League Division Two rivals, to say the very least, and they served up a full-blooded match to kick off 2023 in satisfying fashion. There are familiar faces at both clubs but the work of Kev Kingham and his team behind the scenes at Rangers has been something to behold over the last few years.
On the other side of a trip to GNG Oadby Town to see my own Coventry Sphinx winning in the Uhlsport United Counties League Premier Division South I attended a match fully ten divisions above the MFL2, returning to Villa Park to watch Aston Villa’s win over Leeds United in the Premier League.
There’s been a fair chunk of animosity between Villa and Leeds of late too. Though the events of their last meeting in the Championship exacerbated a rivalry born of two big clubs having their arses in their hands about being in the Championship in the first place, Twitter seems to have been the main driver. That or Tyrone Mings hating Patrick Bamford. Who knows.
Regardless, it was a less than impressive win for Villa under new manager Unai Emery, but a win nonetheless. Bamford scored, because he always does, but goals from Leon Bailey and Emi Buendia had put Villa undeservedly in a position that allowed time-wasting ringleader Emi Martínez to make yet more friends in the name of victory. Bailey’s goal was a beauty, though, and it’s not often one gets to literally jump for joy at my age.
Sphinx’s Isuzu FA Vase Fourth Round tie at Biggleswade United was scheduled for 14th January and then postponed, and for 21st January and then postponed, and finally played on 28th January. A 5-1 win in what I considered to be a very slippery fixture indeed was worth the delay, just about.
But the English football pyramid isn’t about me and my shit groundhopping between clubs I support or with which I have a loose connection. It doesn’t matter whether people choose to go to grounds at the top, middle, bottom or below, so long as they choose to go.
England offers a richness of diversity in its football experience. There really is something for everyone.
You can get lost in a seething mass of humanity behind a Premier League goal or contribute directly by volunteering in non-league. You might prefer the deafening mayhem of the top or the smell of Deep Heat and wet earth at the bottom. You can watch players who’d be recognised on any street in England or semi-professionals and amateurs who’ll thank you personally for being there to support them.
There’s no wrong way, here. I’m not advocating for non-league over the Premier League or EFL – Villa Park remains sacred ground – or making some sort of fuss about which football is or is not real. But what’s so right is having such options. We take it for granted. We shouldn’t do that.
English football is special in spite of itself. Whether your next match is at Manchester United or Plymouth Argyle or Tranmere Rovers or Leamington or Rothwell Corinthians or Liss Athletic, your participation is what keeps it that way.
“It was frozen this morning, frozen in the warmup. I’m just gutted for our fans who got up at five o’clock this morning to be here. We said we were unhappy to play on it and the ref said it was alright. Whoever made the decision for the game to be on, it’s put players at risk today.”
Liverpool FC Women manager Matt Beard – formerly of Chelsea – reflects on the Reds’ match against Chelsea at Kingsmeadow being abandoned after six minutes.
Salty beef extracts
Female WSL managers: Four in 12 bosses are women - is this a cause for concern? (BBC Sport)
‘I felt like I wasn’t worthy’: Footballers with ADHD reveal how the sport is failing them (i)
Scottish Cup: Darvel players & manager revel in win over Aberdeen (BBC Sport)
As a footballer I am surrounded by gambling ads. This needs to stop (The Guardian)
Illegal streaming exists because football broadcasting is no longer fit for purpose(Football365)
Goal of the Week
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Have a week.