Saturday's Evo-Stik West promotion play-off final between Radcliffe FC and Leek Town went with home advantage as Radcliffe, known as 'The Boro', recovered from being a goal down at half-time to win 2-1, surviving the obligatory nervy moments in the final few minutes but overall being worthy of their win.
Promotion to the Premier Division of the Northern Premier League, for the first time in 16 years, has also been confirmed in a post-season where not all of the clubs going into the play-offs at various non-league levels actually had a chance of going up.
A restructure of the pyramid has reduced the number of available promotions around the country and although I will always look to defend the FA, in terms of the difficulty of getting the geographical balance of non-league football correct, having play-offs without the possibility of going up does make something of a mockery of things.
A fairly raucous atmosphere at Radcliffe saw flares being lit and supporters thronging the pitch after the game but I never felt that it crossed the line in terms of what is and isn't acceptable.
At non-league level you always have the chance to move yourself to a different area of the ground and, although they were vociferous in support of their own team, both sets of fans were able to change ends at half-time without issue.
As Radcliffe players and supporters celebrated at the end the Leek team were able to go to their own fans and applaud them and in a way it summed up the best of football at this level.
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