OpenC

I don't know how some of you lads managed to get through the Ashley years like

Just a coffee stop before they head on to the Sunlun Central Travelodge, marra

There's a canny difference between being greedy cunts at an open trough, and actively putting rules in place to stop anyone else getting to that trough BB. I don't think there's a massive equivalence between the 1988-92 gold rush and the blatant gerrymandering that constitutes the administration of the game these days.

Yeah, absolutely bizarre decision making. Plenty of people would have gone to two if they were like 1.30 and 5 or whatever.

Aye, absolutely. The important difference between the Northern League and the Champions League is that a proud new owner of a Northern League club can spend whatever they want to try and improve their situation without some bribed league governance shill telling them that they can't and it's for their own good in the long run you still get the dramatic spurs style falls from grace at established clubs in both scenarios but in non-league you also get upstarts making waves, which is now depressingly rare and evidently unsustainable in Proper Football. Like TRon says, it's been engineered to keep it depressingly rare and unsustainable.

Aye it's no coincidence that there's a pretty strong correlation between paying the most and winning the most like. Not many if any are signing for teams because they love a manager's ethos, they're signing for the team that will pay them literally twenty million more over the length of their contract

thank god the forum is back online spent the last two hours worrying about where I'd get my daily fix of views that things have gone stale

Bought a ticket for Workington just in case. There's a poem about their ground on their website as well. Every fucker doing poems this week.

Yeah, it'll be first and last time. Think I'll book in advance just to be sure of getting in, not sure what crowds they get like

Think I'll get a ticket and head along to Workington's last game on Saturday now the NL is done and dusted. Might have been a more emotional affair if they had still been in the mix for relegation but the photojournalist in me can't miss the opportunity to see the last game at what looks like a great little ground.

Hope so. Looking forward to the poetry follow up, "Whither now, keyboard warriors?" to finish "forst league title in a hunnard year / torncoat ser-caaled fans aal happy that Eddie was still theor"

Big fan of "silverware" / "seventy year". Ashington pit lad poet I reckon. 100% rhyme in that accent and the missing S on the end of years is also textbook Northumberland pitmatic.

Yeah he'll be a miss - two league cups and a promotion back to the Northern League is a canny knock, and he was a good and approachable bloke who always had time for the fans. Not sure if he's got anything else lined up and not sure what the replacement plans are for us - heard some whispers about an Alliance manager ready to step up from a team that have always given us a hell of a game even after we got promoted. I suspect we'll lose a few players as a result of Richie going but it's times like this you think about the makeup of the team - do you want mostly Tyneside and Durham lads who are higher standard but who nobody in Alnwick is that interested in going to watch, or do you want to concentrate on more local lads that might get more people through the doors? There's the core of a good local team seen out the season who I'd like to see kept playing next season, and honestly part of me isn't that arsed about whether they play in the NL or the Alliance, there were great games and good away days in both and shit games and diabolical fenced off 3Gs in both.

Bedlington Terriers had a similar story attached to them. Mysterious fire but thankfully the trophies and expensive gear had been moved elsewhere just before it broke out.

Yeah you see it all across the lower leagues. Wallington have had teams easily good enough to play in the NL for multiple seasons but can't go up because they haven't got the facilities and won't get the attendances to justify lights and hard standing, so are happy to stay where they are. Burradon and New Fordley easily good enough to beat a load of NL2 teams but don't go up. Rothbury have had good teams and big plans but they get gates of 5 if they're lucky. If Alnwick had got promoted this season (and they weren't far off the play offs and can beat anyone on their day) then did the unbelievable and managed it again next season, there's no way that the distances required in even the NPL East would have been sustainable for the 80-150 attendances we get and are unlikely to build significantly on. Percy Main is a great little club but you can never see them anywhere other than the Alliance. Sunderland RCA are a great NL club but I would be amazed if they ever had the financial muscle to compete at NPL level. The financial suicide thing wasn't that far off the money for a fair few teams I reckon, it's just not the case that all teams have an equal opportunity to progress and a lot depends on the depth of the owners' pockets or how good local MPs are at securing multimillion funding from the government for single clubs Did the NL not try to keep themselves a closed shop and not form part of the wider pyramid until the FA threatened to exclude the teams from their competitions?

It would be for some NL clubs to be fair, the travelling is something that a lot of clubs wouldn't find viable and a lot of players just wouldn't do if they weren't getting paid fairly well for it. There are a load of players at clubs well below their levels because they can't be fucked, or just can't, go to Derbyshire or Birmingham on a Wednesday night. It's good that there's room in the pyramid for clubs to face purely local up to national travel but the NL and similar stage 5/6 level is a bit of a sweet spot for fans who like to watch home and away I think. I wouldn't go to many away games if I followed an NPL or higher team.

Speaking of Morpeth, looks like they need (1) a win, and (2) Whitby to lose, and (3) a six goal swing over Whitby, and (4) Prescot Cables not to win in the last game - or they're back to NPL East. Lot of folk around here predicting they'll be back in the Northern League not too long afterwards. Alnwick finished 8th in NL2, 70 points. Reasonable knock again for a team playing in the Alliance a couple of seasons ago (and retaining some of those players) but should probably have been better with a boatload of points dropped to dismal Tow Low, Esh Winning and Synthonia teams.

This season has well and truly put paid to the myth that it's only mackem fans that ever measure their team's success by how another team are doing like

First time at Chester le Street Town, nice old ground

Was this Erling Poundlaand? Watched him against Alnwick in the Senior Cup last year and he looked alright, but against Alnwick

No, I agree that won't happen

I reckon somebody somewhere would probably buy us if the opportunity arose

They forgot to say the important bit: he's too good to not score loads of goals in a team which has been set up expressly to get the ball to him in goal scoring positions

Lad who watches Alnwick Town hasn't worn his Isak 9 Liverpool shirt since he started to play for them. Got it the day he signed, never seen since