WHEN WILL OUR NOISE BE HEARD?

ALMOST two years have passed since it emerged that the EFL were ready to offer three promotion places to the National League as part of the “New Deal for Football” – the proposed financial reset resulting in more Premier League funding for the lower leagues, which instead ended in deadlock, squabbling, self-interest and silence.

- Gregor ROBERTSON

When Wrexham and Notts County were embroiled in their record-breaking battle for the National League title in 2022-23, a light was shone on the inequity of a structure that grants only two promotion places to the National League, but four to League Two.

And there are still faint hopes, perhaps, that the forthcoming independent regulator can force the hand of the EFL to right this wrong, but there’s no shying away from the fact that, in the fight for “three-up, three-down”, momentum has ground to a standstill.

And yet it has become a familiar sight at this time of year to witness the National League’s promoted clubs attacking League Two with the same sense of adventure that earned them a place in the Football League, despite the margins for error being gossamer-thin and narrower than pretty much any other league on the planet.

Chesterfield and Bromley’s starts to this season have been no different, with Paul Cook’s buccaneering Spireites side sweeping aside Crewe, last season’s League Two play-off finalists, with a 5-0 win at Gresty Road last weekend, and Bromley, thanks to the sharp-shooting Michael Cheek, winning the opening two games of their first-ever EFL campaign.

That the teams joining League Two are good enough has never been in doubt. In the past ten seasons, the median finish for the National League champions and play-off winners has been 11th and 14th and, as I’m sure you are aware, no promoted team has been immediately relegated since the system of re-election came to an end in 1987.

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