Non League Insider’s Guide to Non-League Football

If you think about English football, the likelihood is that you will conjure up images of Liverpool, Manchester United or Aston Villa. Perhaps you might be a little bit more adventurous in your thinking and names such as Ipswich Town, Charlton Athletic or Oxford United might occur to you. The likelihood is, though, that the teams that you think of when it comes to football clubs are of those that exist within the Football League.

There are plenty of sides that play their games outside of that structure, however, and the supporters of those clubs are more than happy to all but ignore the game in the upper echelons of the sport in favour of a more basic version.

What Do We Mean by Non-League?

In order to understand non-League, we first have to think about the Football League itself. It was founded in 1888, three years after the Football Association decided to permit professionalism. William McGregor, a Scottish Director of the Birmingham-based Aston Villa, came up with the idea of bringing some order to the chaos that had been taking place, writing to fellow Directors of clubs such as Blackburn Rovers, West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City, suggesting that clubs could arrange fixtures in addition to playing in various cup competitions, with the title ‘The Football League’ suggested by the representative of Preston North End.

A Second Division was created in 1892, in order to allow the Football League to absorb the rival organisation, the Football Alliance. In the more formative years of the two divisions, clubs had to be elected to become part of the Football League. There have been numerous changes and alterations since then, including the addition of two more divisions, the introduction of the system of promotion and relegation, as well as the launch of the Premier League. In general, though, the idea behind the Football League is that it is a professional, structured organisation and any teams not in it are ‘non-league’ entities.

Not Fully Professional

Although there can occasionally be some exceptions, the general idea behind non-League football is that the leagues are full of clubs that are not fully professional. The reason there can be some exceptions is that clubs can be relegated out of the Football League having been professional or semi-professional at the time and they aren’t going to lose that professionalism overnight. In fact, the National League tends to boast clubs that are fully professional, having the aim to make it into the Football League system at some point. The other divisions are mostly made up of semi-professional or amateur clubs.

What adds some confusion to the idea of non-League football is that the vast majority of clubs outside of the Football League do, in fact, play in leagues. That is why it is important to draw a distinction between non-League, which means clubs outside of the Football League, and non-league, with a lowercase ‘l’, which means a team that plays outside of any kind of league structure. There are many different leagues outside of the Football League, which still come under the auspices of the Football Association, being loosely organised by the sport’s governing body.

The Structure of the Non-League Football Pyramid

The system of football in England, which is sometimes referred to as the football pyramid, is a system made up of interconnected leagues. In theory, a team could start in the lowest league that plays its games in the country and make it all the way up to the Premier League, but that isn’t something that happens on a consistent basis. Instead, teams tend to bob around the leagues around the ones that they start in, with most of the leagues lower down the pyramid tending to see teams within the same geographical area playing one another, to save on the expense of travel.

Here is the rough structure of the football pyramid in England, bearing in mind that it can change depending on the state of each team playing in it:

Whilst clubs that play football outside of the top ten levels of the pyramid are also classed as non-League, it is only really the sides within the pyramid that are being referred to when someone mentions ‘non-League’ football. The six levels that are immediately below League Two are referred to as the National League System. These are the levels of the pyramid that are most likely to be able to make it into the Football League at some point. There are six levels of the NLS, with many separate regional leagues and many of those leagues have more than one division.  Below this there are then feeder leagues, these replaced Step 7 in 2020/21.

One thing to note is that the world of Sunday league football is made up of independent entities that have no system of promotion and relegation into the pyramid in place. That doesn’t mean that they can’t join the pyramid if a desire to progress is there, but they are not automatically considered to be part of the pyramid and don’t really get considered when people are discussing ‘non-League’. Similarly, there are as many as 21 levels, but levels 10 and below are not counted as part of the National League System.

It Isn’t Only an English Thing

English exceptionalism is such that some people might imagine that it is only in England where non-League football is played. This isn’t quite true, however. In Germany, the term unterklassig, or ‘under-class’, is used to represent the regional teams that come outside of the 1. Bundesliga, 2. Bundesliga and 3. Liga levels. There is a similar story in play in Spain, where football outside of the professional leagues is referred to as ‘fútbol modesto’, or ‘modest football’. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, any team that competes outside of the national level is considered to be an amateur side.

Australian football sees competitions outside of the A-League Men referred to as ‘non-League’, thanks to the fact that the A-League Men is the only professional league in Australia. There are eight National Premier Leagues as well as various different state and regional leagues played in the country, however. Closer to home, the Republic of Ireland considers all regional senior leagues outside of the top two divisions as ‘non-League’, whilst the Scottish refer to leagues outside of the top four divisions that make up the Scottish Professional Football League to be non-League.

Silverware

The main way in which a non-League team is likely to have come to the attention of the wider footballing world is thanks to the FA Cup. The annual knockout tournament is the oldest national football competition played in the world, having been inaugurated in the 1871-1872 season. It is open to clubs in all nine levels of the football league system, whilst sometimes clubs from level 10 can also be included in the earliest rounds if clubs from higher up don’t enter for whatever reason. Clubs from outside of the Football League enter it hoping to become ‘Giant Killers’ by knocking out a bigger team.

Because the chances of a non-League side winning the FA Cup are practically zero, the Football Association Challenge Trophy was introduced in 1969, offering non-League clubs a chance to win some silverware associated with the FA. In 1974, meanwhile, the FA Vase was established as a replacement for the FA Amateur Club, owing to the fact that the Football Association abolished any distinction between professional and amateur clubs that year. It is currently contested by sides that play in Steps 5 and 6 of the NLS and below, whilst the FA Trophy is for the ones higher up.

Biggest FA Cup Giant Killings

The nature of the FA Cup, allowing teams from outside of the Football League to play against those that reside within it, means that there have been some huge shocks over the years. Often, the shock is more about the names of the sides involved than it is about the teams that play on the day, given the fact that teams higher up the pyramid are more likely to make huge changes to personnel when playing a team from lower down, so there is always more of a level playing field to consider. If one team is playing its reserves whilst the other is playing out of its skin, is it really a shock when one wins and the other loses?

Even so, there have still been some big shocks over the years when non-League teams have defeated their Football League-based cousins in a match, drawing attention to what non-league sides have to offer. They are results that mean a huge amount to the teams involved, given the fact that they can see an influx of money from the match itself, as well as the arrival of supporters for the long term, which can only be seen as a good thing for the survival of clubs much lower down the pyramid who might otherwise have to save the pennies wherever they can find them.

Arguably one of the biggest shocks occurred in 1972 when Hereford United were drawn to play Newcastle United in the FA Cup fourth round. The Magpies finished 11th in the First Division at the end of the season, whilst Hereford ended up coming second in the Southern Football League. That is level seven and eight on the pyramid, so it is fair to say that there was some distance between the two teams. The Dead Bulls had already impressed by earning a 2-2 draw at St James’ Park, so you can imagine the headlines when they won 2-1 at home in extra-time of the fourth round replay.

Also in the 1970s was a match between Second Division side Stoke City and Blyth Spartans of the Northern League. Whilst the fact that Blyth Spartans won was impressive in and of itself, what made it even more noteworthy was the fact that Stoke had only recently been relegated out of the top-flight. Alan A’Court had been put in charge for the match as caretaker manager, following the departure of George Eastham, but when the non-League side won 3-2 it was fairly clear that A’Court wasn’t going to be asked to stay on as manager. It remains one of the worst defeats in the Potters’ history.

When Coventry City travelled to play non-League side Sutton United in the January of 1989, they did so having won the FA Cup just 18 months before. It was expected that the high-flying side would make it through the tie with ease, but that’s not how the FA Cup works. Instead, the manager of Sutton, an English teacher when not working with the football club, oversaw a genuine upset thanks to goals from Tony Rains and Matthew Hanlan. It ended up in a 2-1 win for the non-Leaguers against a Sky Blue side that finished seventh in the First Division come the end of the campaign.

The match between Burnley and Lincoln City in the 2016-2017 season wasn’t expected to present too much of an issue for the Premier League side; after all, no team outside of the top four divisions of English football had made it to the fourth round of the FA Cup for 103 years. Burnley were struggling in a relegation battle at the time, but there is still no excuse for the manner in which they capitulated against a team playing in the National League at the time. The 1-0 win for Lincoln City was one of the biggest shocks that the competition has ever seen in terms of place differences.