Sunday 4 September 2016

Non-League Day 2016

Non-League Day has been and gone for 2016, Saturday's efforts up and down the country gaining lots of positive media coverage and, hopefully, increased awareness among many supporters of the club on their doorstep.

It was a refreshing end to what, for me, was a deflating week football-wise. I wrote recently about the impending Football League Trophy and how ill-judged I thought it was.

The reality was even worse, with plenty of examples to illustrate how poorly thought-out the competition is and how misleading are the claims that it will benefit young, English players, the hat-trick scored by 28-year-old French midfielder Tony Andreu for Norwich City at Peterborough perhaps the most striking of these.

Well-publicised supporter boycotts and individual hostility to the competition changes meant attendances were satisfyingly low but it feels like a small victory in the battle to stop the relentless charge of the Premier League juggernaut.

Wednesday's transfer deadline was another example as clubs in League One and Two scrambled to make loan signings from top-flight clubs ahead of the window closing while spending records were broken at the top level.

When you add in talk of a major re-organisation of the Football League it all adds up to an uncertain future for many clubs at that level of the game, caught as they are between chasing the dream of top-flight or Championship football and remaining rooted in their community.

Although the National League has some of those problems, I think there is an increasing appetite for the simple pleasures of watching a game lower down the pyramid.

Non-League Day has tapped into that and, hopefully, plenty of people will have seen something this weekend that they want to return to in future.

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