Nice to see two teams who in the not-too-distant future were merely a footnote to history taking their place in the Nationwide Conference this season.
The conference, for those non-soccer types and Premier League bandwagon scum amongst you is effectively the 5th division of English football. The actual football league itself (Division 1, 2 and 3) were always reluctant to let the Conference teams in at their own expense - and the denial of Stevenage Borough's promotion a few years back was one of the more cynical and corrupt decisions you'll ever see outside of a Manchester United match - but they've finally relented and allowed a 2 up, 2 down system from last season.
Yeovil Town and Doncaster were the two sides promoted. It's Yeovil's first time in the league, and Doncaster's return after five seasons in the wilderness. Their last season in the league was a farcical tale of dodgy business dealings and fraud. In fact the Chairman at the time paid an ex-SAS man to torch the Stadium, a cunning plan which was only rumbled when the secret service genius left a message on his phone saying "The jobs been done" after half the ground went up in flames.
The two sides unlucky enough to be relegated from the league last season were Shrewsbury (conquerors of Everton in the FA Cup) and Exeter City (who boasted magician tosser Uri Geller as Chairman and Michael f'ing Jackson as an honorary board member).
The real story in the Conference this season, though, is the return to the semi big-time of Aldershot Town and the oddly named Accrington Stanley.
The original Stanley played in the old Football League from it's foundation in 1888 until they collapsed under a mountain of debt in 1962 and were kicked out of the league. The new club was formed in 1968 and as their name was being used as the punchline in a milk ad (the premise was that they died because they didn't drink enough milk - christ I hate advertising execs) they were fighting through the lower realms of the game. Last year's winners of the Unibond Premier League (the northern feeder competition to the conference) they're just one promotion away from an historic return to the league who booted them out more than forty years ago.
Aldershot, on the other hand, left the league a much shorter time ago. Ironically enough, considering they both find themselves in the same league now, during 1992 they became the first side since Accrington to leave the league in the middle of a season. Crushed with debt they were taken over by a supposed "white knight" investor who actually turned out to be a teenage kid with a gift for speaking bullshit and too much time on his hands. They folded soon afterwards.
Starting the new club in the very same season, five divisions below where they had previously been, they rapidly rose through the divisions and were a fixture in the Ryman Premier League (the Southern conference feeder) for five seasons before finally capturing the championship last year.
They're both inspirations to sides like AFC Wimbledon who are attempting to do the same thing, albeit in a much shorter time. Along with AFC (season starts tonight!) I'll certainly be looking out for their results for the rest of the year.
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