From Genesis To Revelation

While an international football tournament that is shaping up to be the best in a generation is taking place in Austria and Switzerland, the silly season is in full flow back home in England. Whether it's the press speculating over how Ronaldinho's move to Manchester City will be funded (Nike paying a proportion of his wages, apparently) and the acres of speculation of Luis Felipe Scolari's appointment at Chelsea at the weekend (as I mentioned before, The Independent managed five pages on the subject yesterday, without once mentioning that Scolari hasn't managed a club side in Europe since 2001 and has never managed a European club side), possibly the most ridiculous story of the summer is taking place in the north-west, where former Conference also-rans Leigh RMI have decided on a little re-branding, following their move to a new stadium.

Leigh RMI (RMI stands for "Railway Mechanics Institute") were initially founded in 1896, seven miles away from Leigh in the Bolton suburb of Horwich. Horwich RMI were a pretty run of the mill non-league club for the majority of their existence, moving slowly up the non-league rankings whilst playing their home matches at the sloping Grundy Hill. By 1995, though, they had decided that they had out-grown their ground, and took up the offer to move seven miles away to Leigh, change their name from Horwich RMI to Leigh RMI, and groundshare at Hilton Park, the home of the Leigh Centurions Rugby League club. They did have brief periods of success as Leigh RMI. They were promoted into the Conference in 2000, and stayed there until 2005, when they were relegated back from whence they came with a grand points total of eighteen for the season. Over the last two or three seasons, they've become one of non-league football's basket cases. In 2005, within days of FC United of Manchester forming, Leigh were on the phone to them, offering to merge clubs. The offer was not taken up. Last season, they were said to be days from signing an agreement with MyFootballClub (I didn't mention them by name at the time, but Leigh were the Conference North club that were almost the team chosen by MyFC last year).

There is a case for saying, then, that Leigh RMI are hardly a club that should be near the top of anybody's Christmas card list (and I'm not even taking into account their original move from Horwich to Leigh, out of which some people might have made quite a pretty penny). So, the club has decided on a new name, LeighGenesis (or perhaps it's Leigh Genesis - it's difficult to say), a new badge and new club colours. Let's detach ourselves from the moral arguments for a moment and take a quick look at the marketing speak that accompanies their change of image:

"The club had adopted the generic Leigh town crest which did not give it any real identity; I believe the Club needed to develop it’s own personality and as part of this there needed to be a strong, individual emblem of association. Ideas of colour were professionally developed into a striking, versatile and contemporary logo which formed the core of the new brand." - Yeah. Stupid football clubs, with their traditions and their coats of arms. What they need is something that the Xbox 360 generation can identify with, like this. That'll get the crowds in. Actually, I could swear that I've seen that badge before somewhere. Ah yes. Here it is. You want to watch out for that Bill Gates. I hear that he can be quite litigious.

"I began with the name; ‘Leigh RMI’ (Railway Mechanics Institute) had followed the Club from its roots in Horwich where there actually was a R.M.I., Leigh on the other hand could not even boast a railway station! Research confirmed that there was little loyalty or attachment to the old name which would make the decision more welcoming than controversial." - So, you decided on LeighGenesis instead, then. "Leigh Town", "Leigh Borough" or "Leigh FC" not quite "with it" enough for you, were they? You do know that everybody is going to rip it out of your name, don't you? It's like changing your name from Jim Smith to Astro Forcefield because it sounds more "marketable". Everyone will still laugh at you. And Genesis? Genesis? A band fronted by one of the most-hated musicians of the last twenty-five years? Christ.

"The Club is surrounded by ‘reds’ from both football and rugby; our red and white stripes simply merged with the crowd so a radical makeover was essential if we wanted to distinguish ourselves in the area. The alignment of football to fashion is pretty well recognised now, and in order to give the new Leigh Genesis FC an appealing, attractive image, the kit had to become less fussy and more modern. The result was a fresh, white shirt with black shorts and socks supplied by established sports brand Nike whose image complimented perfectly the effect we wanted to achieve." - So, to clarify, you had a good, long, hard think about it, having decided that red and white weren't original enough for you. You needed something that would grab the imagination. So, you thought about it, and thought about it, and... white shirts and black shorts. It's not that original, is it? And it's doesn't even incorporate any of the colours on the badge. If you'd picked luminous green and silver shirts, I might have been slightly more impressed.

In this day and age, I am less than surprised that a non-league club has chosen to re-brand itself in such a way. I am also less than surprised that they have done it in such a half-arsed way. You have to do more than change a club's badge, name and colours to make it successful, and I fear that LeighGenesis are doomed to fail in exactly the same way that Leigh RMI were. The new stadium is a definite advantage for them, but in a town which is defiantly a rugby league town, how many of the Centurions die-hards are going to start going to see "the Genesis" every week because they've got a fancy new badge and are now wearing white and black shirts? They may attract more interest if they are successful on the pitch, but this is a club that left its home behind twelve years ago, and this re-branding looks to this particular observer like little more than an attempt to air-brush out over one hundred years of history in the pursuit of what they seem to think will be fame and fortune. If the club proves itself to be well managed and acts in a manner that always puts the interests of it supporters first, it might just succeed, but any success that they have will be in spite of this dismal exercise in marketing, rather than because of it.

Meanwhile, back in Bolton, the Horwich RMI side that formed when the club decided to move away has been playing on park pitches since forming in 1996 may finally be coming home.

A Trust Issue

There was revealing stuff in The Independent this morning - a list of all twenty of next year's Premier League clubs, along with what their current estimated debts are and how much they're expecting to be able to spend on new players for next season. Surprise, surprise, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool top the bill in both the size of their debt and the amount of money they're likely to spend. The combined debts of the top four are a jaw-dropping £1.862bn. The supposed beacons of success within modern English football are almost two billion pounds in debt. Set against this, the debts of the remainder of the clubs in the Premier League are relatively minor (though one can see just how important Fulham's win at Portsmouth on the last day of the season was - at £149m in debt, relegation would have almost certainly been the last that the Premier League would have seen of them, and a Leeds or Sheffield Wednesdayesque implosion could well have been on the cards), but the clubs will at least receive a greater income from television revenues next season as the new contracts kick in and, if all else fails, there are always the fans to bleed a little more money out of. Season tickets are rising at an average rate of 7.2% this summer (over twice the current rate of inflation), though this may yet backfire on them, coming in the middle of a year when the cost of mortgages is expecting to rise sharply and the cost of food has already made the front pages of the newspapers. Can football really buck the wider trend and continue to grow in the face of what might turn out to be the roughest economic environment in a generation?

We have done the argument on here before over how football supporters should define success (the very existence of their clubs rather than the winning of trophies), so I'm not going to go over that old ground again. I would, however, return to the subject of football's economic model and question whether the most established way of running football clubs can ever be regarded as sustainable. We always knew that Chelsea were a billionaire's plaything, but what has only recently become apparent is the extent to which they are - everything that they own is now mortgaged to Roman Abramovich. Massive, massive loans made to chase a dragon that one is starting to suspect that they might never catch up with. Manchester United may be backed in theory by the Glazer family, but that would be an over-simplistic analysis of the financial situation at Old Trafford. United are, in practice, owned by the myriad of banks and hedge funds that loaned the Glazers (or, rather, loaned Manchester United itself) the money for the buy-out in the first place. Manchester United are mortgaged up to their necks - the interest payment alone on their debt last year was £42m. Liverpool have joined the race, too. A club with a serviceable debt that was in the region of £50m last year are now £350m down, and what have Liverpool's supporters got for this money? Well, nothing of any real substance. The promise of a new stadium that will have to be paid for through bigger and grander loans, something approaching civil war at board level and Fernando Torres. You don't even have to think that this sort of financial behaviour to think that it is at best high risk and at worst reckless.

"The other way", however, seems to be working reasonably well. Clubs run by supporters trusts won four promotion places this season, at Stockport County, Exeter City, AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester. All four of these clubs face challenges going forward. At Stockport, the race is still on to raise £1m as the deposit to start the process of buying their Edgeley Park stadium back. Exeter City have to, having taken five years to get back into the Football League, hold onto their place there. AFC Wimbledon will be trying to balance the budgeting of improving their squad in order to challenge for a place in the Conference whilst continuing to make payments on the loan taken out to buy their ground in the first place and paying for much-needed improvements to it. FC United of Manchester have arguably the biggest challenge of all - their groundshare at Bury's Gigg Lane doesn't appear to be working (they make very little money from match day revenues when they should be, in theory at least, one of the better off sides at their level). Can they find another home and maintain a ground development fund that would allow them to build a stadium of their own? They've managed two successive promotions, but are now up into the Unibond League Premier Division, where the competition will undoubtedly be greater.

The challenges facing clubs like these may look like a different universe to the worlds of the likes of Manchester United, but all four of them are doing what they can to plug that gap. Would you seriously bet against all four of them being in the Football League in ten years' time? Stranger things have happened. As long as they are open and transparent in their dealings, don't act in an irresponsible manner with regard to their finances, and keep their revenue streams intact by working within their communities to ensure that they are at the heart of them, giving people an affordable alternative to the hyperbole of the Premier League, there is nothing to suggest that they can't continue to develop. Maybe other clubs will start to take note - after all, four promotions when there are only fifteen trust-owned clubs in Britain is too many to just be a coincidence. In a season that has often made me want to bang my head against the wall, the sight of four well-managed clubs, run by supporters for supporters and trying to do things the right way both on and off the pitch is a real success for the English game in general.

Something Is Going To Have To Give

At one end of the scale, of course, there are crocodile tears, hype beyond hype and more money can most people could ever realistically manage to be able to imagine. Manchester United returned to England today, curiously now being lauded as one of the greatest teams in the history of football on account of winning on penalties, having been outplayed for much of the match. Doubtless the roles would have been reversed and, had Chelsea won, we would now be hearing endless tributes to the stout yeomanry of John Terry and Frank Lampard, and about how Nicolas Anelka was the right man all along. Curiously, Anelka's shoulder-shrugging ambivalence to his penalty miss last night was one of the more refreshing things to happen yesterday evening. In an age in which PASSION and HEART and still held up to be adequate replacements for skill, mental strength and tactical nous, it was pleasing to see the one man currently involved in the whole Premier League merry-go-round shrugging his shoulders and giving that particularly Gallic face that says, "You know, we might have just lost the European Cup, but I'm still on £70,000 per week and sobbing would be somewhat disproportionate, don't you think?".

At the other end of the spectrum, the adulation being heaped upon Manchester United was out of proportion with the scale of their achievement. United are, as I've said on here before, probably the best team in Europe at the moment, but we are currently living through an era when there is something of a dearth of talent in European football. They, in many respects, deserved to lose last night, but the hubris surrounding them has long since disbarred anyone associated with them from having a worthwhile opinion on how they've done. Consider this gem from Alex Ferguson last night: ""We deserved it. With the history of this club we deserved to get this trophy tonight". It has long been a trick of Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United supporters to decry the achievements of anyone else on account of their having "no history", but this condescending attitude now seems to have filtered down to the management. It's not beyond the realms of plausibility to say, "Well, Alex, you didn't deserve to win it on the basis of your performance last night".

Elsewhere, the game keeps rumbling on. The Football League has its play-offs this weekend, and there'll be a full run down on here tomorrow about what will be going on this weekend. The end of the non-league season is in danger of collapsing into chaos. We've already lost Halifax Town, who will be starting again at the foot of the ladder after their expulsion from the Blue Square Premier (although there are two rival consortia currently bidding for the right to be the team for Halifax and play at The Shay next season), and Cambridge City's right to stay in the Blue Square South is still in some doubt after the club failed ground grading for their stadium (although the club has a pretty good reason for having been unable to carry out the required improvements - they were using their money at court, wresting back control of the ground itself from the property developers that it had, as a judge eventually ruled, been illegally sold to), but even more trouble appears to have come in the Blue Square North, with poor old Boston United (to whom, having been demoted two division last season, and are now looking at another potential two division demotion) you can only say, "haven't they suffered enough?" and Nuneaton Borough being threatened with the same sanction, having been forced into administration just before the end of the season.

There'll be more about the parlous state of the game in the lower divisions on here over the weekend.

Leicester Blows

It probably won't help them much but, for the purposes of clarification, here is a list of just some of the teams that have spent at least some time in the bottom two divisions of the Football League: Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest, Bristol City, Watford, Sunderland, Leeds United, Bolton Wanderers, Aston Villa, Middlesbrough, Manchester City, Portsmouth, Birmingham City, Stoke City, Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Bromwich Albion, Queens Park Rangers & Burnley. I could go on. In other words, Leicester City's relegation from the Championship on Sunday afternoon was not the greatest tragedy in the history of football. In fact, considering the size of the club and the fact that that they have never won the championship or the FA Cup, it is something of a statistical anomaly that Leicester City, who were elected into the Football League in 1894, have never played below the second division before.

It was a tense weekend across most of the Football League. Considering what an undignified chase the race to beg for the scraps from the Premier League trough had been, results over the last week or two hadn't left the final day of the Championship as as ridiculous as it might have been, with Stoke City only needing a draw from their match against Leicester to guarantee second place behind West Bromwich Albion, who sewed up their first league title of any sort since they became the English champions in 1920. Stoke scrambled their way to a goalless draw, but it was irrelevant for Stoke in any case, since Hull City were in the process of losing at Ipswich. The race for play-off places was much more interesting, with Watford and Crystal Palace holding onto the last two positions, though Watford were left sweating through eight minutes of second half injury time at Molineux, where Wolves were leading Plymouth Argyle 1-0 and needed a second goal to usurp the Hertfordshire club. They didn't manage it, so Watford will Hull City, while Palace take on Bristol City. At the bottom of the table, Leicester's fate was sealed by their failure to score at Stoke, while Southampton crawled out of the drop zone with a 3-2 win against Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday leapt up to sixteenth place with a 4-1 win against Norwich City.

At the top of League One, the situation was just as tense. Swansea were already up, but an automatic promotion place was still up for grabs for one of Doncaster Rovers, Nottingham Forest or Carlisle United. Doncaster, with a trip to struggling Cheltenham, should really have tied things up with a win, but contrived to lose 2-1, allowing Forest to slip in by the back door with a 3-2 win against Yeovil Town at The City Ground. At the bottom of the table, AFC Bournemouth had showed extraordinary tenacity by winning six in a row when all seemed lost, but they couldn't manage the final hurdle of the race, drawing 1-1 at Carlisle United - a result that did neither team any favours. They will be joined in League Town next season by Gillingham, who went down 2-1 at Leeds.

Finally, a couple of other bits and pieces to tie up. In the Premier League, the title will go to the final day of the season after Manchester United and Chelsea unsurprisingly won at the weekend, but the important matches were played at the bottom of the table. Fulham's remarkable climb out of the bottom three continued with a 2-0 win against Birmingham City at Craven Cottage, while Reading's 1-0 home defeat by Tottenham Hotspur drops them into the bottom three with one match left to play. Yes, that would be the same Reading that were too big for the FA Cup in January (excuse my sniggering at this). Any two of Birmingham, Reading or Fulham could yet avoid the drop - more on this later in the week. Last of all, there was a contender for the comeback of the season at Plainmoor on Monday lunchtime. Torquay United had beaten local rivals Exeter City 2-1 in the first leg of the Conference semi-finals at Exeter's St James Park last week, and extended their aggregate lead to 3-1 just before the hour mark in the second leg through a goal from Kevin Hill. Exeter, however, summoned up extraordinary reserves of fight, and scored four times in the last twenty-one minutes to win the match 4-1, and the tie 5-3 on aggregate to book a place at Wembley for the final against Burton Albion or Cambridge United. Burton and Cambridge play their second leg at Cambridge tonight with the scores tied at 2-2. Too close to call, that one.

Saturday Afternoon With The Radio

I awoke yesterday morning with a sense of chilling foreboding. London, the city in which I was born, appears to be suffering from some sort of collective nervous breakdown and has voted in Boris Johnson as its mayor. It's an encouraging way to start the day. Gripped by a slight but niggling hangover, my thoughts turn to the afternoon's football. The last couple of weeks of the season have a strangely dislocated feel to them, primarily because the different divisions finish at different times. The non-league season finished last week, the Football League this weekend and the Premier League comes to a conclusion next weekend. There are big gaps in the fixture list already where leagues that have already finished should be playing, and the biggest gap, for me, is the end of the non-league season.

It is a big week for AFC Wimbledon. Tuesday night's win against AFC Hornchurch at Kingsmeadow is followed up by a somewhat unholy scramble to get tickets for the Ryman League play-off final at Staines Town. With a ground capacity of 2,600 at their Wheatsheaf Park ground, Staines Town only had to allocate them 600 tickets, but, in one of the season's less well-advised press releases, they announced that 1,500 tickets would be made available to Wimbledon supporters, a figure that was hastily revised down to 1,000 when it became apparent that demand for tickets was going to be high. As it turns out, it's little more than a minor inconvenience for the travelling supporters. Staines are selling tickets at their ground, have no real way of knowing who supports who, and their ground doesn't have effective segregation in any case. Away supporters ended up with the vast majority of tickets for the match, regardless of more or less all other considerations.

In an age in which one can, with the right mixture of satellite dishes and decoders, watch more or less any match from the comfort of one's own laptop, there is something strangely retro about a sold out that can only be listened to on a shonky radio connection that might just fall over at any time. Staines Town have an online radio service, but there is no way that it will be able to cope with the level of demand for a match of this calibre, so Radio Wdon, the online Wimbledon radio service, has offered it's considerably richer resources in order that we can all listen in. The Staines commentary team, however, do an excellent job, offering a largely unbiased view of the afternoon's proceedings.

Listening to a football match on the radio is the most exquisite form of agony. The game goes at a pace that not even the best professional commentators can keep up with, and the crowd are always completely up to speed with what is going on. A collective groan can sound like a huge cheer in the wrong conditions and, even if you're listening very carefully, the ball can be at the wrong end of the pitch without you even noticing. It's a uniquely tense experience, completely unlike watching on the television, or even being at the match yourself. It's not helped by the fact that this particular match is played at absolute breakneck pace, with the ball pinging from end to end like a game of pinball. It looks as if it's not going to be Wimbledon's day. Early exchanges between the sides are fairly even, yet the better of the chances are falling to the visitors. The Staines goalkeeper pulls off a brilliant point blank save from a shot from six yards. Pullen blocks excellently from Nwokeji. Main gets through and is pulled down by Flitter, but the defender is inexplicably booked, rather than being sent off.

This failure on the part of the referee costs them heavily on thirty six minutes, when Flitter himself heads Staines in front from close range, and for the next twenty minutes or so, Staines sound like the better team, squandering a couple of half-decent chances to double the lead and put the game beyond Wimbledon's reach. Nic McDonnell comes on for Anthony Finn at half-time - a switch to a more attacking formation - and, with twenty minutes to play, Mark De Bolla replaces Steve Ferguson, but it seems that nothing is going to go their way. John Main, who has sounded throughout, gets through and is tripped in the penalty area. The linesman flags for a penalty, but the referee overrules him and plays on. Staines, though, are starting to tire. They've had an insanely long season, and it's starting, for the first time, to show. It is now solely a question of whether they can hang on for the last ten or fifteen minutes.

The answer to that question is no, and the balance of the game suddenly swings dramatically in Wimbledon's favour in three suffocatingly extraordinary minutes. With nine minutes left to play, the Staines goalkeeper Courtnage comes out to catch a long throw, but drops the ball under no real pressure at all. McDonnell flicks the ball back across and Luis Cumbers heads the ball in. Courtnage, who has been a safe pair of hands all afternoon, has already been booked for time-wasting and is fortunate not to be sent off. Straight from the kick-off, Staines swarm forward and threaten a second goal, but Pullen safely catches the shot and delivers it back up the other end of the pitch, where McDonnell is tripped up twenty-five yards from goal. Mark De Bolla steps up and shoots low, through the wall and into the bottom corner. At the end of a season like this, such a massive turnaround wasn't exactly in the script.

And then... silence. The radio station has collapsed under the pressure of people trying to log in, and the next best alternative, their supporters forum, has done likewise. There follows an agonising ten minute wait, before independent sources confirm, just after 5.00, that the final whistle has gone at Wheatsheaf Park, that Wimbledon have won 2-1 and have been promoted to the Conference South. The news then comes through that FC United of Manchester have beaten Skelmersdale United in the Unibond League Division One North play-off at Gigg Lane. It has been, Boris Johnson notwithstanding, a decent enough weekend.

So, after four years in the Ryman League, and having failed in the Premier Division play-offs last year and the year before, AFC Wimbledon go forward into to Conference South. Another small step in their fight to reclaim what was taken away from them in 2002. Due to the somewhat cackhanded way that the reorganisation of non-league football to include the Conference North & South was managed in 2004, they have little to fear there. A number of clubs in the Conference South seem happy to do little more than tread water there, and there is plenty of room for the newly-promoted clubs to do well. Last year's champions, Hampton & Richmond Borough, are through to this year's play-off final there, against Eastbourne Borough.

There can be little doubt that, should AFC Wimbledon wish to continue to progress on the pitch, they will need to strengthen their squad, and recent plans to develop their ground will mean that money there is tight. More troubling for them, crowds had been starting to fall at Kingsmeadow this season, though this was most likely due to the feeling of stagnation that followed the two failed promotion bids. This may be arrested by the promotion, even though the prospect of visits from the likes of Thurrock, Bognor Regis Town and Bishops Stortford might not immediately set the heart racing. For all of that, however, they're potentially only one season away from the Conference, Thursday night football live on Setanta and the possibility of a place in the Football League. For now, though, any practical considerations can take the back seat. These are days for merely basking in the warmth of a job well done.

AFC Wimbledon 3-1 AFC Hornchurch

It would probably be fair to say that, for AFC Wimbledon, this season has been a story of "two steps forward, one and seven-eighths of a step back". It started with quiet optimism that, having stalled in the Ryman League Premier Division for the previous couple of seasons, this year would be the year in which they finally took another small step on the road to fulfilling what a sizeable proportion of their supporters regard as their destiny - winning back the Football League place that was swept away from under their feet by a three-kangaroo court appointed by the FA in May 2002. In the previous six years, however, a feeling of optimism has started to be replaced by the altogether more familiar feeling of frustration that the club has, in some ways, under-achieved. Last season, they briefly led the table during the spring before fading towards the end of the season and eventually losing 1-0 at Bromley in the play-off semi-finals. AFC Hornchurch, meanwhile, were formed in 2005 after Hornchurch FC closed down. The original club had been bank-rolled by the a double glazing company whose own sudden closure, with the team playing for promotion from the Conference South, left themin serious financial difficulties. The new club started again in the Essex Senior League, winning their way quickly back into the Ryman League, where they won the Division One North championship last season. This, in other words, is a club that is not used to losing.

It's a long journey up from Shoreham-by-Sea (where I work) to Norbiton, but several factors have convinced me that I should make the journey up. Firstly, I am already aware that, should they get there, it will be more or less impossible to get tickets to the final and, in any case, there are plenty of people more deserving of one than I. Secondly, their form has been patchy enough to warrant me using the special magic powers that I seem to hold over them - in six visits to Kingsmeadow, I haven't seen them drop so much as a single point, and my visit earlier this season saw them dispatch the eventual league champions Chelmsford City by four goals to nil in the FA Trophy. In other words, they need me tonight (this is, of course, meant with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek). The process of buying a ticket proves to be surprisingly painless - a call to the office at lunchtime, credit card in hand, and it's done, along with a cheery "good luck" for the journey up. Even though the weather is horrible (rain lashing down and with a swirling wind that threatens to ruin my new, bouffant wig) and Manchester United are playing Barcelona on the television this evening, there is still a good chance that entrance on the gate without a ticket will prove difficult - considering that it's an hour and a half's train journey, I'm not taking any chances.

Getting to the ground, it becomes apparent that circumstances have taken their toll. The queue for home tickets is long, but roadworks and bad weather have taken their toll on the travelling support - only a couple of hundred have decided to brave the trek across or through London to get here. The crowd is later confirmed as 2,987 - in one sense slightly disappointing for such an important match, but it is worth recalling the weather and the unholy allure of Manchester United and your own sofa. With as many people as possible seeking respite from the weather under the three covered terraces and in the main stand, it looks fuller than it is, and atmosphere is, as ever, excellent. Hornchurch start the more confidently of the two teams, though their pressing doesn't create many chances. At the back, Wimbledon are reliant on the veteran Marcus Gayle, who marshalls the defence excellently whilst displaying a lightness of touch that was overlooked during his time at Selhurst Park in the 1990s. Suddenly (and quite out of nothing), Wimbledon take the lead, when Anthony Finn touches the ball inside to Luis Cumbers, who shoots into the bottom corner of the net. There's a heart in the mouth moment shortly afterwards as the Wimbledon goalkeeper Pullen fumbles a header from a corner, but it is cleared, and Wimbledon surprise everyone by doubling their lead three minutes before half-time, when a throw in is flicked on at the near post for John Main to hook the ball past the goalkeeper.

The second half starts with Hornchurch having no option but to attack Wimbledon, but the home team still look the stronger of the two, and the gaps that Hornchurch start to leave at the back prove be inviting for the home team's strikers. The big chance to kill the match once and for all comes twenty minutes into the second half, when Steve Ferguson runs forty yards with the ball before his shot is blocked by the Hornchurch goalkeeper Dale Brightly. Wimbledon's supporters' fears rose back to the surface with fifteen minutes to go when Hornchurch pull a goal back, Harry Elmes hooking the ball in from eight yards out. Suddenly, Wimbledon's backs are against the wall. For all the pressure, though, Hornchurch fail to create much in the way of clear chances. The seconds, however, still turn to minutes and the minutes to hours as Hornchurch launch ball after ball towards the Wimbledon goal time after time. The clock ticks over ninety minutes and the announcement that four minutes injury time will be added is greeted by a single, collective, anguished moan. They needn't have worried. With thirty seconds to play, John Main picks the ball just inside his own half and, as if it's suddenly no more than a practice match, runs. And runs. He leaves the two remaining Hornchurch defenders for dead and rolls the ball past Lightly and into the goal. The roar of the crowd is almost primeval, threatening to completely tear the roof off The Tempest End, in front of which the ball has just been deposited. Seconds later, the full-time whistle blows and it's over.

Well, it's over for now. Ten minutes or so after the match, the news filters through from Wheatsheaf Lane that Staines Town have beaten Ramsgate 2-1 in the other semi-final, and now a tricky away match awaits them in the final. After a season that has stopped, started and misfired, there was an air of serious trepidation around Kingsmeadow last night, and the crowd's reaction to the result was cathartic. They are, however, only half-way there, and the over-confidence that has blighted their season threatens to yet ruin their season if they don't retain their focus and concentrate on a difficult match ahead. They beat Staines away in the Ryman League this season, but that will count for nothing at five to three on Saturday afternoon, and Staines' form indicates that seeing them off for a third time will be no mean feat. Still, with 1,000 tickets sold in a 2,600 crowd on Saturday and no cast iron stand-out players in the Staines team, it promises to be a tense, nervy afternoon.

Videos of the goals from last night's match are available here.

Tuesday Night Fever

The Premier League has two weeks to play and the Football League finishes next weekend, but for the semi-professional clubs that make up the sprawling pyramid of the non-league game, the normal league season has already ended and the play-offs are about to start. First introduced in 2004, the non-league play-off system has been highly successful, pushing up crowds towards the end of the season, increasing mobility between divisions (many divisions only promoted their champions beforehand, most now promote two now) and provide a useful little cash bonus for clubs hosting matches at the end of each season. The play-offs start this week, with matches being played on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night. For the purposes of clarity, I'll be using the sponsors' names this evening, for once.

The Blue Square Premier: The BSP plays it slightly differently to the other leagues, in that the semi-finals of its play-offs are played over two legs, rather than as one-off matches. The matches are to be played on Thursday and Friday night of this week, and Monday and Tuesday of next week, with the final to be played at Wembley on Sunday 18th May, with a place in the Football League at stake. The first match is between Burton Albion and Cambridge United. Since appointing Nigel Clough as their manager in 1998, Burton have made steady progress up the non-league game, winning the Southern League Premier Division in 2002, moving to the brand new Pirelli Stadium in 2005 and holding Manchester United to a creditable (and lucrative) 0-0 draw in the FA Cup Third Round in 2006. Their squad is a curious mixture of solid non-league players and experienced former League players. Clough himself is still registered as a player at 42 years of age (although he doesn't play these days), whilst the 44 year-old Kevin Poole still keeps goal. Other names of note are the former Republic Of Ireland under-21 international Daryl Clare and midfielder John McGrath, who played a couple of games earlier in his career in the Premier League for Aston Villa. Cambridge United dropped into the BSP in 2005, and have spent much of the last two years fighting a financial battle that threatened the very existence of the club. Their front line is led by the non-league goal machine Lee Boylan (who scored 131 goals in 178 games for Canvey Island between 2001 and 2006) and the former Cardiff City striker Leo Fortune-West.

The other match is an intriguing Devon derby between Torquay United and Exeter City. Torquay United started the season as one of the favourites to get promoted back into the League, but after starting the season encouragingly, they fell away in the league as Aldershot Town pulled away at the top of the table. Torquay are already going to Wembley once, to play Ebbsfleet United in the FA Trophy Final. Exeter City fell through the trapdoor from the Football League in 2003 in a state of financial chaos and were taken over by their Supporters Trust. They entered into a CVA and only narrowly avoided extinction, thanks in no small part to an FA Cup run in 2005 that saw them travel to Old Trafford in the FA Cup Third Round, and earn a 0-0 draw, before losing the replay at St James Park. With the club's finances stabilised, they lost last year's play-off final to Morecambe at Wembley. Managed by former Southampton midfielder Paul Tisdale, their team features former Wrexham goalkeeper Andy Marriott and Rob Edwards, who played over 200 games for Bristol City.

Predictions: Whilst Torquay United have been the second best team in the division for much of the season and will start the play-offs as the favourites, I suspect that they will be the most pressured team in the play-offs and the intense local rivalry of two matches against Exeter City won't help. I'm going to go for Cambridge United, who have won five of their last six matches and recently beat Torquay in a League match.

The Blue Square North: The BS North play-offs also feature three former Football League clubs, although there won't be that many people that can remember Stalybridge Celtic's brief stay between 1922 and 1924. The BS North and South play-offs are also over two legs, with the finals being played at Burton and Stevenage respectively. Stalybridge play Southport. Their striker, Steve Torpey, scored FC United of Manchester's first ever goal in 2005, and signed for Stalybridge after playing a season in the BSP for Halifax Town. Southport were the last club to be voted out of the Football League under the old system of re-election, in 1978. They were promoted into the Conference in 1993 and, having been relegated, were promoted back as the first ever winners of the Conference North in 2005. They were relegated back again last year, but stayed full-time with the intention of getting promoted straight back - having been outflanked by Kettering Town, though, they took the somewhat unusual step of sacking manager Peter Davenport in April. Their attack is led by the veteran former Crewe striker, Rodney Jack.

The other match is between AFC Telford United and Barrow. Telford finished second in the table, having fallen away after chasing Kettering for most of the season. Barrow are the form team unbeaten in a seventeen game that saw them shoot up from the middle of the table to grab a play-off place on the last day of the season. Barrow were voted out of the Football League in 1972, but have had time in the Conference since then, most notably in the late 1980s, when they also won the FA Trophy at Wembley.

Predictions: AFC Telford may have finished in second place in the table, but Barrow's exceptional form in the second half of the season is difficult to ignore, and I fancy them to win the BS North play-offs. AFC Telford have cracked before this season when under pressure (they did this just a couple of weeks ago when faced with a big match against Kettering Town), whilst Southport and Stalybridge haven't shown the sort of consistency that would lead me to believe that they have got what it takes.

The Blue Square South: There are fewer household names in the BS South play-offs, and again a team that has been chasing the title all season is in danger of missing out on promotion. Eastbourne led the BS South for much of the season, but fell away alarmingly in the last six weeks of the season, winning just one of their last nine matches and losing their final league match last weekend against their semi-final opponents, Braintree Town, who benefited from results elsewhere to leap up from mid-table into fifth place on the last day of the season. Braintree got to last year's play-off final before losing to Salisbury City. Braintree obtained planning permission for an ambitious 6,000 capacity stadium earlier this year, and have big plans. This season, though, they have been somewhat fortunate to get into the play-offs in the first place.

The second semi-final is between Fisher Athletic and Hampton & Richmond Borough. Fisher have been this season's surprise in the Conference South. They deserted their home stadium at Surrey Docks, near Docklands, to ground-share at Champion Hill, Dulwich Hamlet's home ground, in 2004. Sami Muduroglu was a director of a company called Quest Residential went into liquidation in 2002, and Muduroglu was barred from being a company director in 2005 after an investigation by the Insolvency Service. He had been the owner of Fisher but, upon his disqualification, ownership of the club passed to his brother, Eren. The club is seeking planning permission to build a new stadium at Southwark Park, with the sale of the (very lucrative) land at Surrey Docks being used at least in part to finance it. Whether this is in any way desirable is a question that I will return to in the near future. Hampton & Richmond Borough changed their name in 1999 from Hampton, and have had a successful couple of years, winning the Ryman League last season and finishing third in their first season in the BS South.

Predictions: Eastbourne are in terrible form, and I simply cannot see a team (Fisher) with average crowds of 200 getting into the Conference. Braintree, I rather suspect, have been somewhat fortunate to get into the play-offs. I think that Eastbourne and Hampton & Richmond will do battle in the final, and I suspect that Hampton might just shade it.

The Ryman League: In the Ryman League Premier Division, AFC Wimbledon (another team whose form has slumped alarmingly over the last few weeks) are at home against AFC Hornchurch tomorrow night, whilst Staines Town host Ramsgate in the other semi-final. Nothing in Wimbledon's form or the demeanour of their supporters at the moment suggests that they will see off Hornchurch, who have that strangely indefinable swagger that some teams carry. I don't expect Hornchurch to lose. Staines Town have just one of their last eleven, whilst Ramsgate have been looking patchy and only sneaked into the play-off places on the last day of the season.

The BGB Southern League: The university team, Team Bath, play Bashley, the village team from the New Forest, whilst Halesowen Town play Chippenham Town in the second semi-final. Bath pushed eventual champions Kings Lynn all the way to the title, but my suspicion is that they ran out of steam in the last few weeks. Chippenham Town had led the table earlier on in the season, but fell away in the last few weeks. I'm going for Halesowen Town to sneak up into the BC South.

The Unibond League: Witton Albion lost out at the very last in the Unibond League this season, and they entertain Buxton in the first leg of the semi-finals. Gateshead, a former Conference club, take on Eastwood Town in the other match. Witton Albion have been tied at the top of the table for much of this season, and I suspect that they will be too strong for their opposition. Finally (although we're not doing the divisions below the Premier Divisions of these leagues), a quick mention and good luck message to FC United of Manchester. Their exceptional form over the second half of this season took them to second place in the Unibond League Division One North, and they are at home against Bamber Bridge tomorrow night. Should they win, they will entertain Skelmersdale or Curzon Ashton in the final at the weekend.

Lewes 3-0 Weston-Super-Mare

It has probably been the strangest seven days in the history of Lewes FC. The club won the Conference South last Saturday in front of a crowd of 1,700 and it must have felt, to their regular supporters, as if the sky was the limit. The events of the last week, however, have plunged the club into something approaching a crisis at what should be the happiest time in their history. Last Tuesday night they went to Hampton & Richmond Borough for their penultimate league match and inexplicably lost 6-0, but the bombshell came on Friday morning, when rumours from the club started to circulate that manager Steve King had been sacked. The club didn't move to quell the rumours and, by Saturday morning, and with the supporters' message board practically on fire, there was open talk of invading the pitch in protest at the decision.

Eventually, the club released a statement that would have set no-one's worries at ease. The Dripping Pan itself has had to have a significant amount of work done to it over the last two or three years or so, and has had a terrace put in behind each goal as a new main stand. The club has estimated that the cost of this work at approximately £1m, and has recently been looking for new investment. The rumour mill currently has it that new investors have been found, but that they wish to bring in "their own man" to run the club. It was in some respects surprising to see that The Dripping Pan had got the required Conference B grading required for them to get promoted, but Conference rules give them one year to bring it up to Conference A grading, which would make it good enough for the Football League. Failure to do so would result in their relegation from the Conference after one season if they fail to upgrade their ground to the required standard. Rumour has it that they are set to become little more than a nursery club for Brighton & Hove Albion, but, while it's probably fair to say that they do need the extra investment, but it's also fair to say that they have treated King, who has just taken them to unprecedented heights, pretty shabbily.

It all made for a curiously tense atmosphere on Saturday afternoon. The crowd was 1,017, over a third less than the previous weekend, and although the opposition, Weston-Super-Mare gamely formed a guard of honour (very gamely, considering that St Albans City's 0-0 draw at Maidenhead United on Tuesday night had relegated them), the team still came out to strains of "Sack the board, sack the board, sack the board" from the terrace behind the goal, as fireworks went off in the far corner of the ground. The match, when it started, was limp and half-hearted. There was no question throughout the whole afternoon where the players' loyalties laid, and one got the impression that they only got their act together enough to brush their dispirited opponents aside for the sake of the crowd. Jean-Michel Sigere put them in front on twenty-one minutes, and Steve Robinson doubled the lead six minutes later. On the hour, Sigere made it 3-0 from close range, and the second half was otherwise most notable for being an unnecessarily bad tempered affair, with three players being sent off - two from Weston, and one from Lewes.

Things started to take a turn for the strange with about ten minutes to play, when about a dozen policemen appeared from the back of the terrace and trotted down to the pitch-side to a chorus of "It's just like watching The Bill" from the crowd. At full-time, the whistle blows with the crowd giving a polite, but distant round of applause, but there is still something in the air. The PA man is on the pitch with a microphone, which leads to my favourite exchange of the afternoon:

PA Man: "We'd just like to think our generous benefactor..."

Crowd: "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

PA Man: "Now, come on. There's no need for that."

He gives the microphone to Steve King, who manages to just about thank the crowd and the players and then bursts into tears, giving the microphone back to the PA man before being engulfed by the whole squad. They are then given the trophy, but a sizeable amount of the crowd is already starting to stream out of the ground. Lewes' big day has already gone rather flat. The players have already been explicit in their support for the manager and it has been rumoured that over half of the current squad could be on their way out of the club. One suspects that Lewes FC has taken too much of the recent hubris surrounding it to heart. It is a town with a population of just 16,000, and to get crowds of 1,000 at all is a major achievement. A number of regular supporters are furious about recent events and some are talking about not turning up next season. Can Lewes FC afford to alienate its hardcore support? I would venture that this might turn out the make next season even longer than it was going to be before.

Almost There Now

Somehow or other, it's the end of the season already. Chelsea, for reasons best known to the Premier League, played on Thursday night, and their 1-0 win cranked up a little more pressure on Manchester United, who were reliant on a late goal from Carlos Tevez to get a point from their trip to Blackburn Rovers. High excitement, then, ahead of the match between Chelsea and Manchester United at Stamford Bridge on Saturday lunchtime. I'm trying to contain my excitement but, as you can probably imagine, I'm more or less at bursting point. Saturday's result does at least mean that the championship can't be definitively won or lost this weekend. Far more interesting are events at the bottom of the table, where even now anyone from Wigan Athletic in thirteenth place could get dragged back into a relegation battle. The current prognosis is bleakest for Birmingham City, who lost 5-1 at Aston Villa and dropped into the bottom three for the first time in few weeks, whilst Bolton's win at Middlesbrough looks likely now to be enough to save them. The football news at the weekend, however, was overshadowed by the death of an Aston Villa after the match at Villa Park on Sunday afternoon. The Sun somehow contrived to decide that the driver of the car was a Birmingham City supporter. Nothing changes, does it? Nineteen years on from Hillsborough, they're still doing the same thing.

The big match of the weekend was in the Championship, where Stoke City played Bristol City at The Britannia Stadium. Stoke won the match 2-1 with goals from Mamady Sidibe and Ricardo Fuller to finally open up a little bit of daylight between second and Hull City, who lost 2-0 at in form Sheffield United, in third place. If they win at already relegated Colchester United on Saturday and Hull fail to beat Crystal Palace, they'll be promoted with a match to spare. Given the way that the Championship has unfolded throughout the season, it almost seems like something of a travesty that it might not go to the last game of the season. West Bromwich Albion are more or less home and dry after a 2-1 win at Norwich City. A win against struggling Southampton on Saturday will take them up. At the bottom of the table, it was all change again. This time last week, it looked like it was the curiously unpopular Leicester City who would be going down. They, however, eased their worries with a 1-0 win at Barnsley, whilst Coventry City won 5-1 at Colchester to ease their own fears and drop Sheffield Wednesday back into the bottom three. It's still any one from six to go down with two matches to go, though.

League One is also as clear as mud with two matches to play. Swansea City are promoted as champions, even though they lost at home to Yeovil Town on Saturday, but the race for second place and the other automatic promotion place is still wide open. Carlisle United's recent wobble continued with a 2-1 home defeat by Southend United, but Doncaster Rovers could only reduce their advantage to two points after they drew 1-1 at Leyton Orient. Nottingham Forest are still looming ominously in third place after a 1-0 win against relegated Luton Town. The play-off places are more or less decided, with Southend United already there and four points between Leeds United and Brighton & Hove Albion, although Brighton managed to maintain the illusion of still being in with a chance after beating Hartlepool United 2-1 on Saturday. One more win from their remaining two matches will be enough for Leeds, though. At the bottom, Bournemouth's extraordinary revival continues. They were dead and buried two or three weeks ago, but they won 3-1 at Walsall to leave themselves four points adrift with two matches to go, but they have won five successive matches to get themselves into a position of being close to safety - if they were to get two more wins and clamber to safety, it would surely be the most remarkable such run in the history of the game.

At the bottom of League Two (out of deference to my already fragile blood pressure, we'll quietly ignore what happened at the top), a little bit of life was breathed into the corpse of Mansfield Town and Wrexham's seasons last weekend. Mansfield beat Shrewsbury Town 3-1 at Field Mill, whilst Wrexham beat Notts County 1-0. There is a chance that one or both of these clubs could haul themselves out of trouble, with County (the oldest club in the Football League) and Dagenham & Redbridge (at the time of writing, the youngest club in the Football League, having been a merger between Dagenham and Redbridge Forest in 1992) possibly on hand to join them. Wrexham have a game win hand on the rest away to Hereford United tonight, but even if they lose that, they wouldn't be mathematically relegated until the end of Saturday at the earliest. A win or draw tonight, and two wins in their remaining two matches might be enough. Mansfield have closed the gap on Dagenham to just a single point.

Most of the non-league trophies have now been handed out. Aldershot celebrated their Conference championship with a 0-0 draw at Halifax Town (a result which mean more to the hosts that it did to the visitors), whilst the play-offs are now likely to be between Torquay United, Burton Albion, Cambridge United and Exeter City, though Stevenage Borough could yet catch Exeter with two matches to play. There are a round of matches being played in the Conference tonight, with just two points separating Northwich Victoria, Altrincham, Halifax Town and Farsley Celtic at the bottom of the table. Perhaps surprisingly, none of those four are playing each other tonight - in fact, Altrincham don't even have a match, whilst the other three all take on potentially disinterested mid-table sides. Northwich are at Stevenage, whose faint play-off hopes will be extinguished if they don't win, Halifax travel to Crawley and Farsley Celtic travel to York City. It's too close to call at the moment, and likely will still be tomorrow morning, as well. Kettering Town and Lewes will be playing Conference football next season, and we'll be taking a closer look at the candidates in the Conference North and South play-offs next week.

Lewes 2-0 Dorchester Town

There's something not quite right about going to the football on your own, but it was a late decision to visit The Dripping Pan on Saturday afternoon. As things stand, though, it's too good an offer to turn up. A nervy midweek 1-0 win against Fisher Athletic has pushed Lewes to within touching distance of a place in the Conference, and the good news was doubled by the confirmation received last week that their home ground had reached the required grading for Conference football. They need just one more win from their three remaining Conference South matches to win the title and even if they don't manage that, Eastbourne Borough need to win their two remaining matches. The match also has a double significance - a defeat would relegate Dorchester Town into the Southern League. This season has been an unmitigated disaster for Dorchester, who started the season as one of the favourites for the championship, but face relegation to the Southern League if they lose today.

There have been some concerns that the might not even take place. In Brighton, at least, it has been raining solidly all morning, and the forecast is for it to continue all day. Thank God, then, for the internet. A quick look at the Lewes supporters messageboard confirms that one of their supporters has received a telephone call from the club, confirming that the game is definitely on. The atmosphere at The Dripping Pan is one of of relaxed, easy confidence. One gets the feeling that the nerves came on Wednesday night, and were allayed by that late goal against Fisher. On the short journey over to Lewes, I have time to ponder the nature of going to matches on my own. I make a resolution to keep very quiet this afternoon. There is every chance that, should I open my mouth, I will end up looking like a Lone Lunatic At A Football Match. Far better that I keep quiet. The flaw with this plan is that, when combined with turning up at the ground just after 2.00, drinking is more or less the only option. So, I stand and watch the players warm up with a pint of beer. When the teams come out at five to three, it's to the strains of Queen's "We Will Rock You", rather than the more traditional "Sussex By The Sea", and I'm starting to go off Lewes a bit.

As it turns out, the first half is a bit of let down. Dorchester look enthusiastic but limited but, even so, Lewes seem impatient and after ten minutes of trying to play the ball through them with no success, they start launching long, high balls towards the target men up front. Dorchester are having the better of the opening exchanges, but the defensive disorganisation that has cost them so dearly this season is on display, when their goalkeeper flaps at a corner, but there are no Lewes strikers on hand to push the ball over the line. At the other end, Dorchester have a less than convincing appeal for a penalty turned down, but it's news from elsewhere that provides the highlight of the first half - second placed Eastbourne Borough have gone a goal down at Newport County, meaning that when half time comes with the score tied at 0-0, no-one at The Dripping Pan is too downhearted. As things stand, it doesn't matter what happens there. They'll be the champions by 4.50 unless Eastbourne can come from a goal behind and win.

The second half begins very much as the the first half ends, with what looks like being the biggest cheer of the afternoon coming with the announcement of a crowd of 1,665 - their second highest of the season. The key moment of the half comes just after the hour mark, when Lewes are forced to make a change after an injury forced them to replace Lewis Hamilton with Anthony Barness. Seven minutes later, Barness gets a little space on the left wing, and crosses for Paul Booth to head into the bottom corner and finally give them the lead. Dorchester haven't really got much to offer, and Lewes are now just running down the clock. They do have time to add a second goal, though, with a couple of minutes to play. The news has, by this time, filtered through that Eastbourne Borough have levelled things up at Newport, so it is with a degree of relief that Jean-Michel Sigere heads in from close range to make the final score 2-0 and sew things up. At full-time, the crowd, somewhat surprisingly, stays on the terrace, as the team dance around on the pitch, drinking from over-sized champagne bottles and waving corporate-sponsored flags.

The jury is, for the time being, out on Lewes' chances of staying in the Conference. It is somewhat ironic that they haven't played terribly well on any of the three occasions that I have seen them play this season (yesterday, and against St Albans City and Bath City earlier on in the season). Their results, however, speak for themselves, and wining the league with two matches to spare is a considerable achievement, for which they should be congratulated. One can't help but suspect, however, that promotion will cost The Dripping Pan some of its considerable charm. One can't help but think that the Conference will not stand for people being allowed to take alcohol onto the terraces in plastic glasses, and it remains likely that the famous grass banks will also have to go at some point. There are also concerns within the town of the effect that Brighton & Hove Albion in moving to nearby Falmer. Those issues, however, are for another day. For now, it's party time in Lewes. A club that was in the Ryman League Premier Division just seven years ago is approaching the summit of non-league football. All they have to do now is keep their place there.

Falling

By five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the Football League could have only two Welsh members left. For many, many years, there were four, but Newport County fell through the trapdoor an into the Conference in 1988 (and folded not too long afterwards), and it now looks likely that Wrexham will follow them after a wretched period in the club's history, which has seen them tossed from pillar to post and took them perilously close to closure. In the overall scheme of things, relegation into the Conference might not necessarily look like such a disaster, but many Wrexham fans are now concerned that this could be a point of no return for them - the tipping point of a downward spiral from which they my never be able to return.

Founded in 1872, Wrexham are one of the oldest clubs in Britain, and are the oldest professional football club in Wales. The likes of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs are mere striplings by comparison. They were voted into the Football League in 1921, when it expanded in size to add the Third Divisions North & South. The first few decades were, to say the least, uneventful. Wrexham had a couple of brushes with promotion (fleeting and consummated just the once - very briefly, in 1960), entertained the Busby Babes in the FA Cup (and lost 5-0) and finished bottom of Division Four in 1966, but largely it was an existence in which they didn't really trouble anyone, and no-one really troubled them. Things started to get more exciting in the 1970s. In 1972 they play Hajduk Split in the European Cup Winners Cup, and in 1974 they made the quarter-finals of the FA Cup before losing to Burnley. In 1977 they were nailed on for promotion before failing in their last few matches and missing out. In the 1980s, after a brief flirtation with bankruptcy in 1982, they continued with the occasional foray into Europe (Roma and Porto both visited The Racecourse Ground in Europe during the 1984/85 season) whilst continuing to trade in the bottom two divisions, but things would become suddenly more exciting for them at the start of the 1990s.

In 1991, they were knocked out of the European Cup Winners Cup by Manchester United and, with the Football League having already confirmed that the no-one would be relegated from Division Four, they finished bottom of the pile again. The following season, they drew Arsenal in the Third Round of the FA Cup. Arsenal took an early lead through Alan Smith, but looked largely off-key, and Wrexham drew level with eight minutes left with a thunderous free kick from the veteran midfielder Mickey Thomas. Two minutes later, with Arsenal (the reigning League champions at the time) still shell-shocked, Steve Watkins scuffed home the winning goal in for one of the greatest FA Cup shocks of all time. The following round saw them knocked out after a replay by West Ham United. In 1997, they made the FA Cup quarter-finals again (beaten this time by Chesterfield), but this was all a prelude to a tale of attempted sabotage that would drive them to the edge of extinction.

When the club's previous chairman sold out to Mark Guterman and Alex Hamilton, their supporters had cause to be concerned. Guterman, after all, had been in charge of a disastrous spell in charge of their local rivals, Chester City, and had nearly sent them to extinction. Moreover, both Guterman and Hamilton were property developers - the natural enemy of the small football club. What happened next was an extraordinary story of attempted asset stripping that ended up in court and a critical landmark victory for clubs seeking to keep control of their assets. Hamilton bought the club in 2002 and immediately transferred the leasehold of The Racehorse Ground (which had been bought from previous owners, a brewery). Immediately the rent jumped up from a peppercorn amount of £1 to £30,000 per year, and gave the club a year's notice to move out of the ground. Fortunately for them, there was an unwitting hero waiting in the wings. The club had fallen into severe financial difficulties, and administrators Begbie Taylor were appointed to oversee the club's affairs. David Acland, the administrator, smelt a rat immediately and took Hamilton to court, claiming that the ground had been acquired by the holding company. In October 2005, the court found against Hamilton's company, and in March 2006 they ruled that the ground was to stay in the hands of the club, who the administrators sold to Neville Dickens, a local car dealer.

Dickens himself has been and continues to be widely criticised by the club's supporters, but the club is in a slightly more stable situation off the pitch than it was three or four years. On the pitch, though, it has been meltdown. They avoided relegation on the last day of last season with a 3-1 win against Boston United that sent The Pilgrims down and kept them up for another season. Brian Little (who was in the Premier League with Aston Villa as recently as 1998) took over the job in November of last year, but he has been unable to do anything to halt the slide. Support within the club is decided over the extent to which Little is to blame. Some say that he couldn't have done any worse than he has done, whilst others have sought to defend him to a degree, saying that he couldn't have done any more than he has wih the meagre resources at his disposal. As it stands, they are nine points adrift of safety with four matches to play. Defeat against Notts County on Saturday will almost certainly condemn them to non-league football for the first time in eighty-seven years.

At this point in the season, there is no point in trying to point out to Wrexham supporters that relegation from League Two isn't anything like the disaster that it was thirty years ago, that they can get to enjoy being big fish in a small pool and might win a few matches for the first time in a couple of years, that the Conference has got more in common with the Football League than it has with the Conference South or that visiting new grounds with lower prices and slightly laxer security regulations, where you might occasionally find a social club at the ground might be more fun than Rochdale for the eighth year in a row. For now, it probably feels like an emasculation - the status of their club's is going to be diminished status and, if you've had Football League status for your entire lifetime, I guess you get used to. I retain the opinion, however, that whether Wrexham's supporters find Conference football a soul-destroying experience or an enjoyable one is down to them to make. I would suggest that, based on the experience of other clubs that have been relegated from the Football League in recent years, they're bound for disappointment if they don't bear up to their new reality with good humour and acceptance of their new, reduced circumstances.

Shots In The Light

It has taken them sixteen long, hard years, but last night Aldershot Town were welcomed back into the fold of the Football League. Since the original club folded in 1992, the club has fought tooth and nail to win its place back amongst the top 92, and last night it became reality at last by virtue of a nervy 1-1 draw at Exeter City. As it turned out, they took 900 supporters down to Devon - not a bad number by any stretch of the imagination, considering that it's quite a distance to travel, especially on a Tuesday night - and the result means that their match on Saturday against Weymouth now takes on the air of a party. They're expected to sell all 6,000 tickets well in advance, and Weymouth, still in danger of relegation from the Conference, will be quietly hoping that the Aldershot players have already started to mentally plan their summer holidays.

We've done Aldershot on here before, so there's little point in going over that ground again, but their eventual success does provide something of a cautionary tale for supporters of the likes of AFC Wimbledon, who may have been expecting their team to rise swiftly through the non-league ranks. Wimbledon are likely to finish in second or third place in this year's Ryman League Premier Division, and there has been an element of dissatisfaction emanating from Kingsmeadow this season. The fact of the matter, however, is that Chelmsford City have been outstanding champions of that division this season, and the play-offs are, of course, something of a lottery. I commented on here before that is critical that they continue to battle away and do everything that they can in order to secure second place in the table and home matches for as long as they are in the play-offs. There are no guarantees of promotion, and their supporters would be better advised to mentally prepare themselves for another season in the Ryman League and treat the play-offs as an end of season bonus. Damage limitation for the brain, if you like.

The picture at the top of the Championship looks even more confused than ever. West Bromwich Albion won last night's big Black Country derby match at Wolves last night. They're top of the table and two points clear now with two matches left to play, but dropping points in either of their three remaining matches could yet cost them dear. Hull City have moved into second place after a 3-1 win at Barnsley last night, but with just three points separating Hull, Bristol City (who are just starting to fade), Stoke City and Watford, it's still anyone's guess who will go up. I'm sticking with West Bromwich Albion and Hull City (Albion have the best players, whilst Hull are the only team in the top five in anything like decent form) as my predictions to go up. The bottom of the table is no clearer. Leicester City are still in the bottom three, but anybody from them up to Norwich City in sixteenth place should still be nervously looking over their shoulders.

Finally, the Premier League. The game is surely now up for Chelsea, after Emile Heskey's inexplicable last minute equalizer for Wigan Athletic at Stamford Bridge more or less gifted the title to Manchester United. It's now looking likely that they will win the title at Stamford Bridge on the 26th of April. At the foot of the table, Bolton's win against West Ham United on Saturday threw the cat back amongst the pigeons again. Fulham are four points clear of safety, which is probably a little bit too much to claw back with just four matches to play, but I honestly couldn't tell you who from Reading, Birmingham or Bolton will join them. Just thinking about it is giving me a bit of a headache, to be honest.

A Stupid Song, A Tree & A Record Losing Goalscorer

When St Albans City Football Club was formed in April 1908, few could have imagined the impact that they would have upon English football - not very much at all. In fact, were human civilisation to end tomorrow, alien archaeologists from the future would almost certainly conclude that their total contribution to that strange cultural phenomenon called "football" was minimal, to say the least. Still, they have reached the grand old age of 100 more or less intact, and while the future for the club looks shaky, the truth of the matter is that this has been the state of affairs at Clarence Park for the vast majority of at least the last thirty years, and is the state of affairs at the vast majority of non-league football clubs.

The club was founded after the failure of two smaller, local clubs. There was only one serious option as a site for the new club. Clarence Park was donated to the people of the city of St Albans in 1894 by the MP, Sir John Blundell Maple Bart. The cricket club had already moved in, and the new football club, run by one George Wagstaffe Simmons, became their neighbours. It is a relationship which continues to this day. After two years playing in the Herts Senior County League and the Spartan League, they went it alone in the Spartan League, before transferring into the Athenian League in 1920. It was the start of the club's golden age - an age during which it must have felt as if the sky would be the limit for this new football club. They won the Athenian League for two of the three years that they were members, and joined the Isthmian League in 1923. In 1922, they played one of their best known matches. Having drawn Dulwich Hamlet to a 1-1 draw in the FA Cup, one might have been forgiven for thinking that a routine replay was on the cards, but it turned out to be anything but. In front of a crowd of over 4,000 people, City were disadvantaged when their goalkeeper didn't turn up and they had to play an outfield reserve team player in goal. One of the most extraordinary matches in the history of the FA Cup ensued, with City losing 8-7 after extra time, with one City player, Billy Minter, scoring all seven of City's goals - an FA Cup record for scoring the most goals and ending on the losing side that still stands and will almost certainly never now be broken.

The classical Greek names of all of these leagues,by the way, are a give-away to their amateur status. The FA had been formed in 1863 by old boys from the public schools, but by the 1880s, clubs that were desperate for success started paying players to play. The amateurs, who primarily treated football as a leisure pursuit, started to break away from the professional clubs. After the Football League, the two biggest football leagues were the professional Southern Football League and the amateur Isthmian League. The amateurs had their own cup competition (the FA Amateur Cup) and their own leagues. In the 1950s and 1960s, though, it became increasingly apparent that amateur clubs, which had long since severed their ties with the public schools and were as desperate for success as anyone else, were paying their players under the counter (it was known colloquially as "shamateurism") and the FA abolished the distinction between professionals and amateurs in 1974, the FA Amateur Cup was replaced with the FA Vase, and everyone started paying (or admitting to paying) their players.

All of this was a long way into the future for St Albans City. They won the Isthmian League in 1924, and then again in 1927 and 1928. In 1924, they beat Third Division Brentford 5-3 in the FA Cup. It was their first ever win against Football League opposition in the FA Cup, and they're still waiting for their second one, eighty-four years later. They made the semi-finals of the FA Amateur Cup - one match from Wembley - three times and lost each time. Had they shown this sort of form in the Southern League, it's likely that they would have been elected into the Football League at some point, but in the Isthmian League they were never, as amateurs, in with a chance. For the next forty years or so... nothing. In a fourteen team league with no promotion or relegation, they existed in a curious bubble, finishing bottom of the table once and never winning the title again. There was a brief flurry of excitement in 1955 when they finished second in the table to Walthamstow Avenue, but they were points behind with two points for a win and in a twenty-eight match season, so it hardly went to the wire. The following season they finished bottom of the table again.

In the late 1960s, however, the club underwent a brief revival. Under the managership of the notoriously tetchy Syd Prosser and with such players as midfielder John Mitchell (who would go on to play for Fulham in the 1975 FA Cup final before returning to manage the club in the 1980s - he ended his career somewhat ignominiously, apparently caught with his fingers in the till at Luton Town) and left back Phil Wood (who would play over 1,000 matches for the club over a twenty-one year period between 1963 and 1984), they started to finish higher and higher in an Isthmian League that had by now been expanded to twenty clubs. In 1970, they had a run to the FA Amateur Cup semi-finals where, after a replay, they lost to Dagenham. The following year, they finished in third place in the Isthmian League and won the London Senior Cup (an important competition in its day - it remains the most important cup they've ever won) but, just as in the 1950s, providence was on hand to ensure that St Albans' supporters couldn't get too excited. With the end of amateurism looming over the horizon, the Isthmian League expanded to two divisions and, in 1974, St Albans City were relegated into the Isthmian League Second Division.

The really lean times had begun. There were occasional high points - in 1980/81 they made the FA Cup Second Round, and a crowd over over 6,000 people saw them draw 1-1 with Torquay United to put them in the Third Round draw, only for them to lose the replay 4-1 at Plainmoor (it would have been Barnsley away in the Third Round, in case you were wondering). In 1983, though, they were relegated again, to the Isthmian League Second Division. This time, they had sunk as low as they could go, and in 1984 they were promoted back to the Isthmian League First Division. Two years later, another extraordinary match would take them back into the Isthmian League Premier Division. On the last day of the season, they travelled to the south coast to Lewes, needing a four goal win to guarantee promotion. They raced into a four goal lead inside half an hour and went on to win 7-1. The next few seasons were largely spent struggling against relegation, but the next "great" St Albans City team came along out of the blue.

In retrospect, the team had been developing for a year or so, but after years of torpor, it all seemed like a bit of a shock at the time. Steve Clarke had been signed from Wivenhoe Town in 1991 for £5,000 (and would go on to score 322 goals in 488 matches for them over the next nine years), whilst Allan Cockram (whose career had stalled at Spurs in 1984, but impressed sufficiently during his first spell at Clarence Park to signed by and feature for Brentford in an FA Cup quarter-final at Brentford in 1989) returned to Clarence Park in 1992. Manager John Mitchell took full advantage of the wide Clarence Park pitch by playing wingers, and the team played some outstanding football during the 1992/93 season. In truth, they never looked likely to win the Isthmian League that season. The eventual champions, Chesham United, were too strong. However, Chesham declined promotion, stating the cost of renovating their ground as being too high. City, in second place, were therefore eligible for automatic promotion to the Conference for the first time, but there was a problem.

The story of the trees was one of those novelty news stories that makes national headlines for a couple of days, and then gets forgotten about. Clarence Park is, as you may recall, part of a public park, and there were two trees within the ground itself. One was tucked away in a corner and out of harm's way. The other, however, was slap bang in the middle of the terrace behind one of the goals, and overhung the pitch slightly. The club fought fiercely, coming close to making slanderous statements about the Conference's ground-grading committee, but everyone knew that they couldn't go up with the tree there and, since the tree was protected, that was that. The ground was nowhere near Conference standard. It had no medical room and didn't have enough enough turnstiles or any segregation. The team disbanded, and the club stayed where it was. In the late 1990s, though, the tree was diagnosed with a mysterious disease and dispatched with hilarious speed. New turnstiles were built, and Clarence Park was converted into something approaching a proper football ground.

The good times seemed to continue to go hand in hand with the bad. In 1999, the club made the semi-finals of the FA Trophy, and were 3-1 up on aggregate in the second leg of the semi-finals against Forest Green Rovers with fifty minutes to play. City had a perfectly good goal disallowed when 3-2 up with twenty-five minutes to play and, of course, lost 4-3 on aggregate. In 2002, they nearly folded. Chairman Lee Harding put the club up for sale for £1, after they failed a CVA that he had entered them into. Barred from football by the FA for an agonizing five weeks, they were one day away from a winding up order when John Gibson, a property developer, bought the club on behalf of his company, William Verry. Gibson has become more and more unpopular as time has gone on. Rumours have circulated that he is only interested in building the club a new ground outside the town (St Albans, smack in the middle of the Green Belt that surrounds London, is one of the most difficult places in Britain to get planning permission to build upon and is also one of the most desirable and expensive places in the country to live - you don't have to be Einstein to make the connection), and even that he is running the club into the ground. Reports like this - never refuted - and his abrasive manner with the club's own supporters and other clubs has left him isolated at Clarence Park and the club unpopular in wider non-league circles.

On the pitch, City surprised everyone in 2006. Since Gibson's take-over, the club had seemed to be fighting a perpetual battle against relegation. However, when Colin Lippiatt took over at the start of 2005 and took them clear of relegation, things started to look up. A mixture of older players, such as the experienced former Boston United goalkeeper Paul Bastock, players that hadn't quite made it at a higher level, such as winger Matt Hann and youngsters such as striker Lee Clarke combined to make an attractive team which was unlucky to finish second to full-time Weymouth in the Conference South. With a bye to the final of the play-offs, City comfortably saw off Histon by two goals to nil at Stevenage Borough's Broadhall Way in front of a crowd of 3,200. To say that the Conference season was a disaster would be something of an understatement. The club refused to go full-time, but with players starting to accept better offers from elsewhere, they plugged the gaps with loan players and cast-offs from elsewhere. Playing at a higher level than they had ever experienced before, the result was predictable - their defence was amazingly porous (they conceded at least five goals on three occasions at home) and, whilst there were high points such as an opening day win at Kidderminster, a home thrashing of York City, an away win at Cambridge United and a derby win away at Stevenage, they were relegated with games to spare.

Lippiatt retired during the summer of 2006, and St Alban's City's prospects took an immediate downturn with his departure. With just seven registered players, Gibson brought in an untried 29 year old, Ritchie Hanlon, to manage the team in July 2007, and they started the season disastrously. It was the 23rd of October before they won a Conference South match, and Hanlon was replaced by former AFC Wimbledon manager Dave Anderson. Anderson was a curious choice. He had failed to take Wimbledon up from the Ryman League the year before and left "by mutual consent", with the general opinion being that he had taken them as far as he could. Quite how he was considered a good enough manager for a team a division above them that was clearly in a state of flux is an outstanding piece of lateral thinking. The club replaced him in January, and Steve Castle (who had overseen the worst St Albans City team I've ever seen in 2004) took control for a second time. It was the return of striker Paul Hakim (who had left under a cloud in 2006 - an attempt at poaching by Weymouth left his position at Clarence Park untenable, and he ended up warming the bench at Stevenage Borough) and Paul Bastock, the goalkeeper, that would prove to be the catalyst for an extraordinary revival. Since Bastock's return, they have won five and drawn two of their seven matches - their seventeen points in seven matches comparing favourably with the twenty that they had managed in the previous thirty-one. They currently sit three places above the relegation places with four matches to play and a six-pointer away to Bognor Regis Town on Saturday.

So, a hundred years on, that's St Albans City. Still plugging away at English football's sixth level, still getting average crowds of 500, and still occasionally threatening to make it to the big time or go bust, without ever quite managing to do either. They may not have many (or, indeed, any) trophies to their name, but St Albans is an excellent place to go drinking in and Clarence Park remains one of the most unique and attractive places to watch football in England. In that respect, I guess we're winners simply because they have lived to be 100 years old. Ah, and the stupid song? Well, they've been singing "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (yes, by Band Aid) at St Albans matches for a few years now, and no-one can quite remember why now.