How To Watch Non-League Football
A beginners' guide to the game outside the 92 league clubs (Page 3)
Contents:
(Continued from previous page)
The ethical approach to watching non league football
- If possible, travel to most games using public transport, bicycle or foot. As well as doing the planet a favour, your local team's social club could benefit. Say bye-bye to the orange juice and have a pint before the game;
- Join the supporters' club;
- Tell your friends about the wonderful world of non league football. Insist on bragging about your team's prowess than feign interest in the overhyped and overcovered games;
- Play an active role in the running of your adopted club. This can range from being a steward or working on their website;
- Support chartered coaches to away games instead of making your own way by car to away games. If you insist on driving, start a car sharing scheme;
- Support the official supporters' club or official club coaches to the away games - and press for more coaches;
- Travel on public transport to most away games where possible;
- Support locally owned shops, cafés and pubs.
Above all, enjoy yourself.
Conclusion
As an avid supporter of a non league football side for over a decade, it is worth the effort in finding obscure grounds and planning journeys to the back and beyond. It is worth the effort in telling your fellows that you went to South Elmsall for a Frickley Athletic game on a freezing November (when their highlight is seeing their favoured team on a big screen). Then they ask where South Elmsall is. Result: in one way you have alienated an audience, though at the same time you have got them thinking "I've never been there".
Football irrespective of level is much better experienced live, actually going to the games rather than watching it on a pub television. I have noticed this even more watching non league football. Rather than boast about a higher profile game, there seems to be more satisfaction going to Ossett Albion on a damp Saturday. As fewer people attend compared with the big 92 league clubs, you feel that you have taken greater ownership of this experience. This is as opposed to being one of so many million viewers happy about an England victory.
Watching a team with indifferent luck seems more compelling than watching one with frequent success. The latter breeds sterility and predictability. The former breeds anticipation and an experience akin to several roller coasters. Football would be a poorer game without a degree of unpredictability.
It is always easy to back a winning horse every time. If that horse has won the last fifty races, complacency sets in and the opportunity for challenge is missing. Though it may be nice to follow an already successful team, it doesn't quite compare with following a team with indifferent luck for several years. This is especially so if you find that your attendance at a night match against Hucknall Town with only 170 fans is rewarded the following season with a glut of trophies. Especially when you supported them through the lean times, before the 'hangers on' jump on the bandwagon in the middle of an unbeaten run and ruin the parade.
At present, non league football is seeing at one end of the scale increased attendances, with the national Conference League almost in effect a fourth division of the Football League. The down side has been increased financial pressures on smaller clubs, with players joining more established Conference clubs. At the other end, attendances are being affected by the impact of live televised football. Examples of this have included Premiership football beamed by foreign channels at the 3.00pm Saturday kick off time. Another includes the clashing of international fixtures with non league competitions. Last season, some rounds of the F.A. Trophy and Vase clashed with international games.
More so than ever, local non league sides need your support.
Further reading:
Website:
Six Tame Sides: the trials and tribulations of Mike Smith, a Mossley based non-league football fanatic, photographer and lover of real ale.
Bibliography:
The Non League Grounds of Great Britain, Kerry Miller; Polar Publishing (1995);
The Non League Club Directory: the definitive handbook detailing almost every non-league team in the UK, published on a season by season basis.
Periodicals and Newspapers:
The Non League Paper: Britain's first non-league newspaper, published on a weekly basis each Sunday since 2001;
Groundtastic: a quarterly fanzine devoted to football grounds around the world, from Spanish non-league grounds to English Premier League venues.
Stuart Vallantine,
Thursday, 24th August 2006 (updated Saturday 2nd May 2009).
