Lydney Town AFC
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Lydney forced to switch League's!!!!!
The FA's re-organisation of football at Step 5 (Premier Division) & Step 6 (Division One) is starting to gather pace.
We were told at a meeting last summer that the FA wanted to reduce the number of leagues at Step 5/6 level down from 14 to 12 and following a meeting of the FA and all the leagues last weekend it appears that it is the aim of the FA to have this new league structure in place for the 2013/14 season. This will entail much upheaval not only for the leagues involved but also for all the clubs playing at our level.
Details of the meeting held at Burton Albion FC on Sunday, attended by Hellenic League Chairman Bob Dalling and General Manager Brian King, gave further insight into the FA’s thinking and will certainly affect all of the Gloucestershire & Wiltshire teams currently playing in the Hellenic League. A proposed snapshot of the league (see list) shows a Western League with 6 of the current Hellenic Premier Division namely Cheltenham Saracens, Fairford Town, Highworth Town, Shortwood United, Shrivenham & Slimbridge included. In theory this means that at the end of next season if all the current 6 Hellenic League clubs are still in the Premier Division they will be forced to join the Western League.
The remainder of the Premier Division clubs show as members of a ’Central Division’ which I would hope would come under the auspices of the Hellenic League. The re-organisation shows 15 Hellenic League clubs being joined by Alton Town, Hants, from the Wessex League, Holmer Green of the Spartan South Midland League and 7 clubs from the Combined Counties League (Ash United, Camberley Town, Cove, Egham Town, Farnham Town, Sandhurst Town & Windsor). There has already been responses from Wiltshire sides Shrivenham & Highworth Town and they are not very happy. The thought of having to travel to Ilfracombe & Barnstable is not going down well so it will be interesting to see what effect their response is when they attend the meeting for Member Clubs from all the Step 5 Leagues. These meetings are being held over the next 4 weekends at various regional venues across the country and feedback from these meetings will determine the way forward. It appears that the majority of leagues are in favour of the re-organisation while I guess the ones against are the leagues that are likely to disappear under these new proposals! Once the Step 5 organisation is sorted the aim is for the Review Group to look at Step 6 over the next few months, which is where we come in!
Having studied the proposals and documents appertaining to Step 5 I can only surmise what the result for Step 6 will be but in my own mind the only conclusion I can draw from the way the thinking is at the higher level we will be forced to switch our allegiances to the Western League. With the four Step 5 Gloucestershire clubs being forced into the west we will surely have to follow. It makes no sense for Gloucestershire/Wiltshire based Hellenic Division One (West) clubs to be in the Hellenic League when the Pyramid promotion system feeds into the Western League and since the whole aim of the re-organisation is to regionalise leagues it can be the only logical conclusion for Step 6 clubs, so we will have to wait and see!
Since the Western League Premier Division currently only has 18 teams the addition of 6 Hellenic League teams fits nicely into the proposed 24 team structure for Step 5. The main issue at Step 6 level as far as I can see is that 30 into 24 doesn’t go. The current Western League Division One has 19 clubs while the Hellenic Division One (West) has 11 Gloucestershire/Wiltshire based clubs giving a grand total of 30 clubs all vying for 24 places. This means that they will have to eliminate 6 clubs from the equation and this will probably be decided on facilities. If you look at the 11 Hellenic League clubs in Division One then Tytherington Rocks, Purton, Cricklade Town, Brimscombe & Thrupp and Trowbridge Town are all currently minus floodlights and would therefore not comply with the requirements for clubs at this level. There are also some clubs in Division One of the Western League that currently do not meet this so it will be interesting to see how this one pans out. Of course Floodlights are not the only requirement for Step 6 football and the need for covered stands both seating and standing plus hard standing around a percentage of the pitch are issues we still need to address at Lydney. The 25 year lease agreement with the Recreation Trust is currently being finalised so we now need to push on with getting this in place in order to proceed with the improvements we know we must do. Certainly the plans to re-structure feeder leagues at our level is fast gathering pace and if we don’t start to do something soon we could well find ourselves left behind. All the hard work we have done to get us this far could well be wasted so we need to act now, the 2013-14 season won’t be long coming round!!
There will obviously be a lot more talked about on this topic over the following weeks so I will try to keep you all informed.
Details of the meeting held at Burton Albion FC on Sunday, attended by Hellenic League Chairman Bob Dalling and General Manager Brian King, gave further insight into the FA’s thinking and will certainly affect all of the Gloucestershire & Wiltshire teams currently playing in the Hellenic League. A proposed snapshot of the league (see list) shows a Western League with 6 of the current Hellenic Premier Division namely Cheltenham Saracens, Fairford Town, Highworth Town, Shortwood United, Shrivenham & Slimbridge included. In theory this means that at the end of next season if all the current 6 Hellenic League clubs are still in the Premier Division they will be forced to join the Western League.
The remainder of the Premier Division clubs show as members of a ’Central Division’ which I would hope would come under the auspices of the Hellenic League. The re-organisation shows 15 Hellenic League clubs being joined by Alton Town, Hants, from the Wessex League, Holmer Green of the Spartan South Midland League and 7 clubs from the Combined Counties League (Ash United, Camberley Town, Cove, Egham Town, Farnham Town, Sandhurst Town & Windsor). There has already been responses from Wiltshire sides Shrivenham & Highworth Town and they are not very happy. The thought of having to travel to Ilfracombe & Barnstable is not going down well so it will be interesting to see what effect their response is when they attend the meeting for Member Clubs from all the Step 5 Leagues. These meetings are being held over the next 4 weekends at various regional venues across the country and feedback from these meetings will determine the way forward. It appears that the majority of leagues are in favour of the re-organisation while I guess the ones against are the leagues that are likely to disappear under these new proposals! Once the Step 5 organisation is sorted the aim is for the Review Group to look at Step 6 over the next few months, which is where we come in!
Having studied the proposals and documents appertaining to Step 5 I can only surmise what the result for Step 6 will be but in my own mind the only conclusion I can draw from the way the thinking is at the higher level we will be forced to switch our allegiances to the Western League. With the four Step 5 Gloucestershire clubs being forced into the west we will surely have to follow. It makes no sense for Gloucestershire/Wiltshire based Hellenic Division One (West) clubs to be in the Hellenic League when the Pyramid promotion system feeds into the Western League and since the whole aim of the re-organisation is to regionalise leagues it can be the only logical conclusion for Step 6 clubs, so we will have to wait and see!
Since the Western League Premier Division currently only has 18 teams the addition of 6 Hellenic League teams fits nicely into the proposed 24 team structure for Step 5. The main issue at Step 6 level as far as I can see is that 30 into 24 doesn’t go. The current Western League Division One has 19 clubs while the Hellenic Division One (West) has 11 Gloucestershire/Wiltshire based clubs giving a grand total of 30 clubs all vying for 24 places. This means that they will have to eliminate 6 clubs from the equation and this will probably be decided on facilities. If you look at the 11 Hellenic League clubs in Division One then Tytherington Rocks, Purton, Cricklade Town, Brimscombe & Thrupp and Trowbridge Town are all currently minus floodlights and would therefore not comply with the requirements for clubs at this level. There are also some clubs in Division One of the Western League that currently do not meet this so it will be interesting to see how this one pans out. Of course Floodlights are not the only requirement for Step 6 football and the need for covered stands both seating and standing plus hard standing around a percentage of the pitch are issues we still need to address at Lydney. The 25 year lease agreement with the Recreation Trust is currently being finalised so we now need to push on with getting this in place in order to proceed with the improvements we know we must do. Certainly the plans to re-structure feeder leagues at our level is fast gathering pace and if we don’t start to do something soon we could well find ourselves left behind. All the hard work we have done to get us this far could well be wasted so we need to act now, the 2013-14 season won’t be long coming round!!
There will obviously be a lot more talked about on this topic over the following weeks so I will try to keep you all informed.
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Good update Roger. The club needs to build an infrastructure that supports a level of football above that currently achieved so that the young players coming through have something to aspire to and their progress is not stunted like ours was a few years back. I understand its hard but we should do everythig within our power to ensure we get that infrastructure in place.
The barrier to building the infrastructure is neither desire nor ability it is purely financial. The club has neither sponsors nor a "sugar daddy" prepared to invest the type of money required. A conservative estimate is that the ground improvements required will cost somewhere in the region of £80,000, and we still owe over 80% of the loan taken to erect the floodlights. Football Foundation funding - which is not a given - now requires 50% match funding so the club will be required to find at least £40,000. Money raising activities to date have been extremely poorly supported, this year we have fewer members than last - a steady decline over the past 4 years. Until everyone involved with or using the club is prepared to put in some effort the committee will find it very difficult to raise the level of funds anticipated
We also have to realise that the playing level for the club is not ever going to be any higher than the league above the one we play in now. Right now even if we had a major sponsor we would still have to move and own our ground. Even with a 25 year lease the Trust (in my opinion) would still only let us go so far with improvements required to play at the next level. We have done really well to get lights, but like Adie said, we are still paying for them and will be for some time yet. We have to be realistic but at the same time show the talented youngsters we have that they can play at a decent level that provides FA Cup and Vase fixtures. Everything about the game nowadays is about money, especialy with a club that runs 3 senior teams and U 18's.
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