Castles. Hedges the size of grandstands. Corner flags that have seen better days. New York
Cosmos fans. Luxury suites the size of an outdoor toilet. And real, genuine, muddy football. Pitch
Invasion tours a sampling of Non-League football in England throughout 2011, courtesy of the
wonderful work and dedication to the lower levels of the English game by photographer Paul
Paxford.
Continuing our non-league series this week, here's the final photo from Jon Hall at Terrace Images
Weymouth 2, Bury 2. FA Cup 1st Round, 12th November 2006, Wessex Stadium
Continuing our non-league series this week, we look at another photo by Jon Hall from Terrace
Images. No jokes, please. Weymouth 2, Bury 2. FA Cup 1st Round, 12th November 2006, Wessex Stadium
Continuing our non-league series this week, we look at another photo by Jon Hall from Terrace
Images. Aldershot Town 2, Chelmsford City 0. FA Cup 1st Round Replay, the Recreation Ground, 21st
November 2006
Photo Daily is back, and this week we're looking at non-league football, courtesy of photos by Jon
Hall from Terrace Images. Poole Town 3, Budleigh Salterton 0. FA Vase 2nd Qualifying Round Replay,
Tatnam Farm, 27th September 2006.
As a fan of a Non-League side it's very rare that I have anyone to talk to about the team I
support. I completely understand why some people will have little or nothing to say about the
Non-League but what really gets on my nerves is when I hear people writing it off as being a poor
level of football.
Financial instability continues to see David beat Goliath in Lower leagues is a post from: Just
Football
As has been well documented in recent years there are a whole host of league clubs who are
seemingly operating on borrowed time due to season upon season of poor financial
management.
From his disastrous tragi-comedic cameo during the final hours of Cumbrian killer Raoul
Moat's fatal stand-off with the Rothsbury police constabulary back in July or the car
crash in Newcastle's quayside district that left him hospitalised for best part of a week the month
previous, it seemed that former England star Paul Gascoigne was unravelling a
little further with every headline he stumbled his way in to.
This is a guest post from Ian Carroll, a first-time contributor to The Offside.
The last two competitive games I've been to were Newcastle v Villa (season ticket holder at SJP
cautiously optimistic of survival y'see) and England v Algeria, so I figured this should be fun! A
hell of a lot more fun than the game in Cape Town anyway .
Just Desserts #4: Non-League Day Special is a post from: Just Football
Just Desserts is a semi-regular feature on Just Football, in
which we provide links to good reads elsewhere on this thing we call the football blogosphere.
And with Non-League Day taking place this weekend, this edition is a non-league
special.
On Saturday, 4 September there are no Premier League or Championship games across England, with
the national team playing the evening before. A grassroots campaign has sprung up on Facebook and
Twitter to urge fans of bigger clubs to get out of their armchairs that day and go and support
their local semi-pro Non-League club an idea we're all for.
Shhh... no one mention the Golden generation. (Thing is, will there be another one?)
In a matter of days, England will be taking most of the players who were infamously coined "the
golden generation" to the World Cup – although obviously we don't talk about that now!
Though the FA Cup does not generally tend to enter wider national consciousness until the big guns
of the Premier League & Championship enter at the 3rd round stage in January, the world's oldest...
For a number of seasons now Leiston FC have been knocking on the door for promotion out of the
Ridgeons League for pastures new, be it the Ryman League or the Zamaretto League. The club
certainly appears geared for the next step up the pyramid, proven by their stunning 2008/09 FA Cup
run which saw the Blues make the 1st Round proper for the first time in their history.
A new series looking at clubs whose glory years are some time past. We start with perhaps
the biggest club currently in England's non-league pyramid, Oxford United, relegated from the
Football League in 2006, just two decades after winning a major trophy at Wembley Stadium.
Headington United
Oxford United have a long and interesting history.
"Let's go for a little walk" is Havant & Waterlooville's terrace victory tune, as your editor
discovered when they played Lewes recently in a Conference South clash. Our resident non-league
expert, Ian King, thinks they'll be singing that tune either way after they head
to Anfield this weekend, explaining the past and present of the potential giant-killers.
Since we've been talking non-league all week, it seems fitting to end it with Chasetown F.C.'s
elimination from the F.A. Cup today. The Southern League team (originally known as Chase Terrace
Old Scholars Youth Club; their ground still reflects this, being called the Scholars Ground) were
the lowest-ranked team ever to make it to the [.
Going Green Dartford FC on 'Sustainable' Target is a post from: Just Football
On the eve of the new 2010/2011 Football Conference season in England, David Cockcroft, a
new contributor toJust Football, gives us the lowdown on newly
promoted Dartford FC and their unique, environmentally friendly stadium.
We live in an internet age. If previous decades ultimately came to be almost unanimously defined by
the cultural, economic and political standpoints of its people at the time (in a similar way that
the 60s are defined as the age of free love, for example), then for now our generation is most
certainly open to being branded the age of mass multimedia.
AFC Totton vs. Eastleigh, Testwood Park, Totton, Hampshire. Pre-season friendly. 17 July 2010.
Currently playing in the Southern League Division One South & West, AFC Totton have, incidentally,
an absolutely wonderful logo.
Photo credit:Paxie on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion
Photo Pool.
It's bad enough when teams change their names in an effort to sell more fizzy energy drinks for
a global corporation. But nothing beats your club changing its name because it turns out the
founder, chairman and driving force behind your small club in the community had led a double life
for forty years as a "manipulative and ruthless paedophile" exploiting his access to children
through football.
When I saw Lewes FC, a Non-League football team in the south of England, play last December, little
did I know they were on their way to a huge promotion and tumultuous changes that threaten the
heart and soul of the club.
When Lincoln City and Enfield met in the quarter-finals of the FA Trophy in March 1988, it marked a
transitional point in the history of non-League football which, Ian King says, is surprisingly
healthy today despite the Premier League's hegemony.
Our recent series on non-league football attracted considerable attention, as we explored the
strengths and weaknesses of the foundation of the English game below the Premier League and the
Football League. Ian King will be writing regularly for us on the non-league game
and kicks his column off by telling us what you need to know about non-league.
In collaboration with Bill Turianski from billsportsmaps.com website, today we present the second
in our primers on the English football pyramid as we continue the week's non-league theme. Here's a
wonderfully illustrated map of the 32 highest-drawing clubs outside the Premier League and the
Football League.
In collaboration with Bill Turianski from the brilliant billsportsmaps.com website, today we
present a basic primer on the English football pyramid as we continue the week's non-league theme.
Some of you might be well versed in this already, but it will be useful for those perhaps hazy
about the levels that fall below the Premier League [.
Poor Chester City, of England's Football Conference. Imagine waking up the day after Christmas
and finding that your club had appointed as Director of Football a man who had led another club
(Halesowen) into severe financial peril and expulsion from the FA Cup, and who had received a
year-long touchline ban after clashing with one of his own players?
A few days before England coasted to victory against Slovakia in World Cup qualification, Cardiff
City cruised to a 3-0 mid-season friendly against Merthyr Tydfil. But while the result may have
been meaningless, the match itself wasn't as the British Gas Business club needed every last penny
from the game to ensure their survival.
Sportfreunde Großsachsenheim v TSV Phönix Lomersheim II.Germany, April 2008.Grassroots
Football. Photo courtesy of poity_uk on Flickr, in Just-Football's photo pool.
We've been looking at English non-league football all week, and in something of a call-to-arms,
Dave Boyle suggests that more supporters of non-league clubs need to take charge of their own
destinies. The last five years as an AFC Wimbledon fan have immersed me in non-League football. Up
to then, I thought of non-League in much [.
