A premier decision for non-league
Words: Tom Reed
Images: Tom Reed
I don't have to sell my soul
He's already in me
I don't need to sell my soul
He's already in me
I Wanna Be Adored: The Stone Roses
The Premier League has plenty of decent players, with stadia set out to worship the thoroughly competent.
Premier League fans are spoiled with skill, nearly all the players can do an “around the world” trick without messing it up. At least 25 kick-ups without shinning the ball off a pot-plant.
Hundreds of thousands of seats point at the action, with every move pored over by a global audience.
In non-League however, so many steps down the English football pyramid so that you can hardly make out the top, it’s not all about the football.
And that’s the point, football has never been all about the football and so the non-League game offers social relief to people whose lives are often hard, but don’t make a song and dance about it.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Bath City FC.
One in five people live in quiet poverty in the UK according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and it stands to reason about as many standing with you on the terraces of a non-League match will be short of a few bob.
In the Premier League, the skint will still be there, in fewer numbers because of top-heavy ticket prices, that are harder to get around than the admission costs in the non-League game.
Non-League Clapton CFC in East London offer “pay what you can afford” entry, they give equal billing to the women’s team and let kids have a kick about on the pitch after games.
It’s an inclusive thing at step 10 of the football pyramid, where they are so far from the top tier destination that they can just enjoy the Bill Hicks ride.
Things aren’t perfect in non-League however and the “price elasticity” of ticket pricing is stretching the understanding of what is acceptable to pay, particularly in the National League (four steps below the Premier League) where walk-up ticket prices are sometimes indistinguishable from those a step above in League 2 of the Football League proper.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Tamworth FC hole in the wall.
But below the National League, where clubs exist hand to mouth, you can’t ask much more than charging figures that won’t force supporters to make dodgy decisions on family budgeting.
If you look hard enough you’ll find free vantage points at many grounds, such as the hill above Bath City FC’s Twerton Park and the magnificent hole in the wall at Tamworth FC. There will usually be a lone fanatic peering with a can of strong Polish lager instead of a gathered throng but remember it’s not all about the football.
The non-League game has been free of the overt “middle-classification” of the Premier League that was intrinsic to the Football Association’s 1991 blueprint. There simply wasn’t the funding or interest at the time to encourage non-League to go all-seater like the Premier League and much of the English Football League (EFL).
So you can stand on sturdy terraces in the non-League, grip the crumbling patina of crush barriers and sing yourself hoarse if you want to. There’s less through-to-your-bones chill in winter like you get when you’re stuck in a seat and you can jink around and change ends with your team at many grounds.
Non-League fans often go home with the sweet smell of beer in their jeans, not through drunkenness per se but by trying to juggle a pie and pint and dodging skewed shots.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Dulwich Hamlet FC.
Less room for your phone in your palms when they are triangled around three pints while you are traversing several steps on the terrace.
Mothers and fathers bring theirs buggies on the touchlines and the kids chomp on big hot dogs and play around the adventure playgrounds that are non-League grounds.
Old men rub their brows and clutch older scarves, where the notion of glory hunting is laughable because glory is extinct.
Non-League is often a happy place, away from the misery league of the top tier where so many have little to play for or aggrieved at something or other. While “sportwashing”, “multi-club ownership” and “oligarchs” have entered the football lexicon via the Premier League, most of non-League is essentially fan-owned, being held together by volunteers who get get little more in return for their work than seeing their clubs get through 90 minutes.
Goal celebrations are real, instant and well felt, there’s no VAR or second guessing yourself and no flashing advertisement hoardings to distract.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Star Lane End. Macclesfield FC.
Real stars emerge in non-League, where players can often look like us but just better than us at football. Letting rip a top-corner screamer on a Saturday when they’ve been at work all week.
Non-League grounds reflect the quiet history of towns rather than the in-your-face branding of the Premier League. Corrugated iron, tin roofs and concrete.
Caddy, the editor of football fanzine Trasferta, which features stories of football from all levels, has found a growing love of non-League sport, watching more and more games at Emley AFC in the Northern Counties Eastern League Premier Division, away from his first love and EFL stalwarts Barnsley FC.
“The non-League game continues to open my eyes as to what football was and can truly be. Beers on the terraces with your mates, teams of lads you could have a pint with grafting hard for three points. Clubs giving a shit about you, not because they must for their bottom line, but because they’re run by people like you.”
“Watching Barnsley scratches that itch in the part of me that clings to tradition. Watching the club my dad and grandad watched, in the ground they went to every Saturday for decades. The part that hopes that things can change, and we can see things like safe standing, better policing, fan ownership or at the very least strong fan organisations and cheaper tickets.”
“Watching Emley scratches the itch of the part of me that sees modern ‘league’ football as a lost cause, the part that’s seen how pure and rooted in values things can be at FC United of Manchester and wants a piece of that for himself. The part that resents being told where I can and can’t sit, where I can and can’t drink and which parts of a city centre I’m not allowed in because I’m there to spend 90 minutes watching some football and paying £30+ for the pleasure. The part that looks at what’s happened to historic clubs like Bury, Southend, Macclesfield and thinks that if league football can turn their back on these clubs and their fans, why can’t the fans turn their back on league football?”
Indeed at a non-League match the only trace of big brother with the lion crest comes from clubhouse big screens, when Arsenal and United matches creep on outside the TV blackout but can be switched off if needs be.
Yet, last week, the thin membrane of non-League solidarity was pierced when it was announced that the National League had written to its member clubs saying it backed the abolition of FA Cup replays.
©Tom Reed. Terrace Edition. East Bank. Aldershot FC.
Then, the Athletic’s Matt Slater announced that the National League and the Premier League were to join up for a new competition with 16 sides from each organisation in what seems like a Checkatrade Trophy mark two.
The equivalent of non-League football letting the foxes into the chicken coop in brand power terms, boiling up the water ready to mix with the Paxo stuffing and slathering itself in parfum de poulet.
Slater was typically pithy about the motivations of the National League, posing some questions of his own on X:
Meanwhile, Jon Colman, veteran reporter of the extremities of both English football (Carlisle) and low attendances in the fan-boycotted EFL Trophy was unequivocal about the prospect of Premier League club involvement in a tournament with non-League teams.
The strength of non-League football is its difference and detachment from the Premier League. The two are chalk and cheese and if they become cheese and cheese, all you’ve got is a smelly football fondue, with the bread likely costing an arm and a leg to dip in.
While Clapton’s fans have been said to have an eye on the class war, their greatest battle to come might well be an anti-colonisation battle with the upper echelons of English football. At fan-owned FC United of Manchester, where the motto is “making friends not millionaires”, they’ve come out swinging on reported Premier League talks for a 39th game in the USA saying “until supporters have control of the game, the door is always ajar for people such as Premier League CEO Richard Masters to make money at the expense of ordinary fans.”
If non-League football ends up as a pound shop Premier League, with dour all-seater out of town grounds, the same flashing advertising boards, discount VAR, Robocop stewards, no beers on the terraces and top tier B-sides scurrying around in ninety pound nylon then it’s done, long term.
The adoration over.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Barnton FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Hereford FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Leamington FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Banbury United FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Tamworth FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Bath City FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Altrincham FC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Clapton CFC.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. FC United of Manchester.
Tom is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on X: @tomreedwriting
