North, East, South, West....

Another good post there Nick and considering the motorway network wasn't in place, there would have been a bit of a logistical nightmare during the club's transition from local to league side in those few short years.

Would the steam train have been the prefered method of transport to get to somewhere like Norwich?

Leigh, you disappoint me. I was expecting you had the receipt for the tickets and the train times written on the back of an envelope addressed to Percy Mackrill.

Great stuff Barty.

Can you do 1909/10 for us? I don't know exactly where Longpark Pottery played, but if you put the marker where Justin stores his bananas you can't be too far out.

On second thoughts, you were batting for the other side back then weren't you? That'll be one marker at the Palk Arms and all the rest in Plymouth.

After the quick rise during the 1920s from local football to the Football League, the geography of who and where the club played was pretty set until the late 1950s. This was mainly because Division 3 (South) had a small turnover of clubs due to only one club being promoted each year and none being automatically relegated to a lower level. Clubs entering and leaving the Football League were few and far between; the main changes in the south being the demise of Merthyr and Thames and introduction of Aldershot, Colchester, Gillingham (who left and came back), Ipswich and Shrewsbury.

This effectively meant that who we played in the South West, the South East and South Wales remained largely unchanged from year-to-year. Further north, it was the case of the “line” between regional divisions occasionally shifting from the Central Midlands to the North Midlands. Some years we played no further north than Walsall or Shrewsbury; other seasons we ventured as far as Port Vale or Mansfield.

Imagine, then, the changes brought about by the introduction of Divisions 3 and 4 in 1958, both to be run on a national rather than regional basis. Our last season in Division 3 (South) was fairly typical with our opponents stretching up to Port Vale which, compared to certain other seasons, must have seemed a positively Arctic expedition:

DIVISION 3 (SOUTH) 1957/58



Then look at the founding season of the new Division 4. Workington, Barrow, Carlisle, Darlington, Hartlepool, Gateshead were all on the fixture list:

DIVISION 4 1958/59

There’s been a bit said about how “southern” a division is this year’s League Two. I hadn’t done the counting until I plotted the map below and discovered there are fifteen clubs south of Birmingham and only nine to the north. Has there ever been a more southern fourth tier?

LEAGUE TWO 2011/2012



When you look at League One, you’ll see there are fourteen teams north of Birmingham. Rochdale and Bury both there together with the two Sheffields:

LEAGUE ONE 2011/2012



Sooner or later, once you start on this sort of topic, somebody will raise the issue of regionalisation. I’m not sure about it myself and wouldn’t advocate it until beneath the level of Conference National. Below that I did think that Conference North and Conference South was a logical progression. Now, with Bishop’s Stortford in Conference North, I’m beginning to think that we might be best going back to the former three-way split.

But what about higher up the ladder? How would it pan out if regionalisation was re-introduced?

Even oldtimers such as myself are actually too young to remember Div 3(S) and Div 3 (N), thank you very much. But I guess that, when somebody suggests the idea, our generation automatically thinks of the resurrection of that concept with just two national leagues – the Premier League and the Championship. Unnecessary, too drastic, it’ll never happen in my book. Forget it. But, were it to be introduced for this season, Lge 1 (S) – as it would be known in modern parlance – wouldn’t even stretch as far north as Northampton. That’s further south than in the old days showing the drift southwards in terms of Football League membership and strength.

Fourteen Lge 2 and ten Lge 1 clubs, by my reckoning: weaker than the northern section but obviously stronger than our present league. Better opposition, better football, shorter distances but would we ever get anywhere near getting out of it at the top with maybe just three promotion places across the two sections?

LEAGUE ONE (SOUTH) 2011/2012



Ah, but it seems current thinking about regionalisation is more likely to focus on pooling Lge 2 and Conference National before splitting to create Lge 2 (N) and (S). Again I’m not convinced but it’s probably the more likely of the two possibilities. Depending on how you draw the line, this season would have meant making a decision about whether to place Kidderminster or Kettering in the northern section. I’ve gone with keeping Northampton and Kettering together in the south with Kidderminster heading north with the other West Midlands clubs. This would place us in a southern section that would be considerably stronger than its northern counterpart with fifteen League 2 clubs and nine from the Conference. We’d probably do better but we would want to sacrifice Bradford for Bath or Port Vale for Braintree? Newport County rather than Accrington? Well....

LEAGUE TWO (SOUTH) 2011/2012



Current Conference clubs in this section: Bath, Braintree, Cambridge United, Ebbsfleet, Forest Green, Hayes & Yeading, Kettering, Luton, Newport County,