merse
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Posts: 2,684
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Post by merse on Jan 5, 2009 22:16:46 GMT
Their earnings from football - and Telford's part-timers were probably on roughly the same as some of Webby's full-timers - meant that Divsion 3 and 4 clubs just couldn't offer them enough money.  In the last year before I left the area, I refereed a few training games for Webby and I can tell you that a whole raft of players were only on the books because of the appalling money they were prepared to play for. There WAS no relegation in force, therefore the pressure was off as regards finishing bottom and the club were able to bumble along at the bottom with a bunch of Raggy Arse Rovers' standard players, not worthy of the description "professional" They'd have got more money from the Job Centre! I recall one day going up to Plainmoor to watch a match at that time with former player Jez Payne - he was with Yeovil at the time I believe - as his and my games were frozen off. After 20 minutes we looked at one another and left the ground for a walk around the harbour....................I don't think either of us made the effort to return again whilst that regime was in control. It was a total piss take as far as I'm concerned. |
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Jon
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Post by Jon on Jan 6, 2009 0:01:19 GMT
I think it's becoming clearer that all football below the FL, where people pay to watch, has been termed " Non League" since the ending of the amateur distinction in 1974. Prior to 1974, the big amateur leagues in London (mainly the Isthmian and Athenian) and a few other parts of the country - which had paying spectators - carried on under the banner of " Amateur Football" (upper case). This was consolidated by the FA Amateur Cup, the England Amateur team, the prevailing social hierarchy (the "toffs") and the generous publicity this branch of the game enjoyed. Meanwhile - probably from the 1930s based on Jon's findings - the semi-professional game (Southern, Lancashire Comb, Cheshire County, Midland, most Western League clubs, etc) started to be known as " Non League". I don't think the terms amateur and non-league were mutually exclusive. The 1935 article talks of Southall as BOTH amateur and non-league. Southern League clubs would have been non-league, but not amateur. By the way, Luscombe's 1948 History talks of TUFC playing in the FA Amateur Cup. He is mixing up Torquay Town playing in the FA Cup in 1910/11 and the original United in the Devon Senior Cup in 1902/03. Neither United nor Town ever entered the FA Amateur Cup. |
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Post by graygull on Jan 6, 2009 4:19:21 GMT
If ther is a measure of how good the teams in the "conference" are compaired to ten years ago just look how some have progressed when they have been promoted up from it.
The like of Yeovil, Morcombe, Aldershot and Daggers have more then held their own in the higher div's and even marched onwards from the third.
I think Scotty, that the commo also said re the eight teams still in the cup that in the "conference" there were now only four teams with part time players and the rest were full time pro clubs.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2009 8:49:10 GMT
I don't think the terms amateur and non-league were mutually exclusive. The 1935 article talks of Southall as BOTH amateur and non-league. Southern League clubs would have been non-league, but not amateur. By the way, Luscombe's 1948 History talks of TUFC playing in the FA Amateur Cup. He is mixing up Torquay Town playing in the FA Cup in 1910/11 and the original United in the Devon Senior Cup in 1902/03. Neither United nor Town ever entered the FA Amateur Cup. Indeed, Jon, I don't think the terms were mutually exclusive - when used by the wider footballing world - but from within the amateur game I sense there was a definite preference for the description "Amateur Football". I've a 1948-49 Amateur Football Yearbook, picked up in a second-hand bookshop in Porlock (of all places), which nicely captures that world. Other publications ran " With the Amateurs..." features and, just looking at a random Soccer Star from 1966, there's a Non-League Round Up page and a separate one for Amateurs and Schoolboys (by Bernard Bale) As you say, Southall were amateur being members of the Athenian League. Reaching R3 of the FA Cup in 1935 - by beating a fellow non-leaguer - would have been quite an thing in the 1930s. Hence the Times report and, maybe, the need to coin a descriptive term. Fascinating it's the Times - a paper that would have reported amateur (and public school) football more than semi-pro - the Arthur Dunn Cup...and all that. I've been reading Bill Luscombe recently, having noted the health warning in the centenary history. Not too hot on the 1910/11 cup run, is he? Losing 1-3 to Accrington Stanley of the North Eastern League in "Mersey fog" isn't entirely accurate, I fear. Interesting, however, that he describes Accrington, in the Lancs Comb at the time, as a " full professional side". The Balfour reference is curious - he'd lost his Manchester East to Horridge seat in 1906 and, at the December 1910 election, retained his place as MP for the City of London! |
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