IS THIS PLAY-OFF SYSTEM FAIR? STATS CERTAINLY STACK IT UP!

HOW fair are the National League play-offs?

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Not very according to York City, who last week published an open letter criticising the current system and calling for "immediate reform".

The Minstermen finished second, six points behind champions Barnet and 23 clear of fifth-placed Oldham. Yet it was the Latics who snatched promotion to the EFL, winning a one-sided play-off semi-final 3-0 at the LNER before going on to beat seventh-placed Southend at Wembley.

"At the very least, this outcome should provoke an honest re-evaluation of what fairness in football truly means," wrote York’s co-owner Julie-Anne Uggla.

Uggla's primary complaint is the lack of a second automatic promotion place. But in its absence, is the play-off system currently used in the National League actually the fairest of all possible worlds?

In an attempt to answer that question, we've analysed every National League season since the play-offs started in 2002-03, when a golden goal from Francis Tierney at the Britannia Stadium sent Doncaster Rovers into the Football League.

What the numbers show, in broad terms, is that teams who finish higher in the regular season do tend to be more successful.

Since 2003, 23 teams have gone up through the play-offs. Of those, seven finished second (30 percent), nine finished third (39 percent) and five came fourth (22 percent).

Only two have ever finished lower than fourth and won promotion Grimsby, who came sixth in 2022; and Oldham, who last month became the first fifth-placed team ever to reach the EFL.

So far, so fair (ish). But that isn't the whole story. What's particularly interesting about the National League is that, unlike the EFL, it has used two different formats.

From 2002 until 2017, four teams contested the play-offs in two-legged semi-finals.