NLS paused for 2 weeks with immediate effect.

Games off tomorrow.

A sensible decision for now. In my opinion it should be ended!! If the season is to be ended then the right financial package must be in place!

I can't help feeling that the league was pushed into this by the clubs who said they weren't prepared to play this weekend. Hopefully it will give them time to sort out the financial support whether the season continues or not.

I’m surprised only three clubs came out in public saying they wouldn’t wait for the League to make their minds up. I suppose there’s a slight chance some resolution might be reached before we are due to start again but for what?

If the season restarts on 6 February that leaves City 112 days to complete the season, assuming the deadline remains as 29 May. With 27 matches to play we will be looking at two matches each week. And that’s assuming there are no more breaks due to Covid postponements or interventions by the weather. Welling will have an extra 4 games to fit in while in the north Darlington an extra six.

And don’t forget these matches are all likely to be played in empty grounds with no possibility of any club being relegated. And of course the players and staff will be expected to continue with out regular testing. Madness!

Ollie Bayliss has tweeted this evening that the NL board has said that an overwhelming majority of North and South clubs rejected the option of loans and the idea of the league taking on the loan is now off the table. The more cynical among us might wonder if it was ever really on there in the first place.

The board goes on to say that if no suitable funding is found the clubs will be offered a vote ‘on the permanent position of the season’.

At the same time the DCMS has made the following statement:
“It is untrue to suggest funding to the National League was ever promised as all grants and they have been unable to substantiate this claim.
In October we brokered a unique deal with the National Lottery to provide a £10 million pound cash injection to keep Step 1 and Step 2 clubs afloat, and recently announced another £11 million in low interest loans to support them in line with support offered to other sports.
If any individual Step 1 and Step 2 National League club can demonstrate it is in critical need of support and would be unable to repay a loan, grant applications will be assessed on a case by case basis. This will of course be through the same rigorous process that we apply to other sports.”

I think the line “...they have been unable to substantiate this claim” just about sums up how the board has dealt with everything.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/amp/football/55818377?__twitter_impression=true

What an utter shambles.

You almost couldn’t make it up! To say that the league is “in a mess” must be one of the great understatements!

Even by the standards of the NL board, coming away from that meeting not knowing what form the ‘future funding’ would be in is pretty amazing. Hard to believe that they can stay in place having clearly misled the clubs into starting the season, let alone the way the National Lottery money was distributed and then their failure to publish the report criticising them for it, but somehow I suspect they will.

Although it will be disappointing if the season does end now, it will be tempered slightly by the fact that Torquay are 9 points clear at the top. It wouldn’t surprise me though if they tried to find some way of keeping the top division going to avoid falling out with the EFL.

As someone mentioned on the Wealdstone forum, Torquay would sell their soul to the devil to win promotion back to the promised land!

I agree with you that the NL Board will probably remain in place - the fact that there have been no resignations apart from the CEO’s speaks volumes - but surely they will be faced with a vote of no confidence. There must be at least one club willing to table the motion and sufficient disgruntled clubs to at least give it a bloody nose.

They want the Premier to go down to 22 clubs don’t they?

If there’s no conclusion to our season it wouldn’t surprise me if they carried on with the division above and relegated one team. Looks almost certain by the table it’ll be a southern side. No promotion from ours or North. Would get all three back to 22 clubs.

Anything could happen in truth.

Yes the NL see themselves, or like to see themselves, as wedded to the EFL and concerned that any breach of automatic up and down might change the process. The EFL needed reassurances the NL would go ahead before agreeing to relegation last season.

As for Torquay, if we were 9 points clear at the top, I guess the tone on here might be different. It was last summer.

Hmm... that was the case at Wealdstone if you remember with their fans up in arms when it looked like the season might not be decided on PPG. Reading their forum these past two months suggests that may have been favourable to what they are now enduring.

The 'anything could happen' that Mark mentions is the announcement by the league that North and South will restart on 6th February. This comes almost exactly at the same time as Nigel Huddlestone confirmed that although Steps 3 to 6 will get £10m in grants any money going to the National League will be in the form of loans.

Also reading that the games postponed from Saturday 23rd and 30th (Braintree and Maidstone away for us) will automatically be re-arranged to 11th and 18th May, although clubs can apply for them to be played earlier if they have free dates.

Our return games with those teams are in that month as well so we might look to change.

stillmanjunior wrote:Our return games with those teams are in that month as well so we might look to change.

That would give us 6 games in April and 8 in May, assuming we ever get that far.

BBC Sport is reporting that there has been a meeting of the NL board today and that the clubs have been told that they will be asked to vote on the resolution of the season next week, although they haven’t been told what the specifics of the vote are. According to Ollie Bayliss on Twitter there is a suggestion that there could be separate votes for Step 1 and Step 2.

They have also reported that Nigel Huddleston has written to all of the clubs inviting them to meetings on Friday or Tuesday to ask questions about the funding situation.

I hope that Ollie is correct about separate Step 1 and 2 clubs.