National League System Restructure- Nick Speaks

Earlier this week the FA announced their proposals for the reorganisation of the National League system at Steps Four to Six, and David Square last night caught up with Pitching In Isthmian League Chairman Nick Robinson to get more detail about what is likely to happen.

“We’ve been working on the restructure for some time,” Nick explained. "We think it's right to do it now."

Asked whether there had been any resistance, he went on:

“We’ve had nothing but positivity so far, but if people don’t want this, we won’t do it. We’ll never please everybody, but we just felt that the restructure needed to happen and that those who got promoted because of it should be promoted on their playing record. We finally got that eighth division (at Step Four), and this should hopefully be for the good of all Step Four, Five and Six clubs. It’s going to give us (The Pitching In Isthmian League) a number of different clubs, Step Five will get two extra Divisions which should help them in terms of geographical spread, and what we’re hoping is that we’ll achieve the geographical closeness we’ve been aspiring to.

From five to four we’re putting a bias on the North, which is very important because the Northern League clubs particularly in the past have not wanted to go up because the travelling is too great. We need to do the best we can, and hopefully the top three clubs in the Northern League, North West Counties League and Northern Counties East Leagues will want to come up. Unfortunately there are big areas in the North East and North West with few clubs at our level, so it can be difficult to ensure they don’t have to travel huge distances, but we can do the best we can. I think that those clubs recognise what we’re doing- we’re not making this compulsory, but we hope they’ll want to come up. “

Asked whether he’d have preferred to do the restructure after a full season, Nick explained that he was just going to take a positive view.

“We’ve had a null and void season and one curtailed. I think it would be foolish for us to go into season 2021-22 believing that there will be no interruption. If there isn’t, that’s brilliant, but we felt that we needed to do what is best for the National League System as a whole, and do it now.
I wish that in hindsight we’d have called the 2019-20 season curtailed so that we didn’t have the argument now about using the data, but I think it’s really important that we give Steps four, five and six the idea that they’ve got something out of what could be three years of disruption.“

Nick also spoke about the planning that was done for the 2020-21 season and the difficulties faced by the Trident Leagues- what they were and weren’t allowed to do by the FA and the Alliance Committee. He went on to confirm that our Step Four Divisions will have two relegation places next season, and covered the difficulties experienced in allocating clubs to the appropriate leagues.

Watch the whole interview below. By the way, the League constitution for next season should be confirmed on 17th May.