Division 5? How 25 years of automatic promotion/relegation has changed the Conference. Part 1.

This is the 25^th season since automatic promotion and relegation was introduced between Division 4 and the Conference for the 1986-87 season (for the sake of consistency and clarity, that’s how I’ll be referring to the divisions throughout this article, Division three, League two, random sponsors, bite me!). So this seems like a good time to take a closer look at how this has altered football at this level, and the difference in the success of relegated and promoted teams, and how that’s changed over the 25 years.  In this first instalment, I focus on the relegated sides, the Conference and how it's developed over the years.

Looking at the development of the Conference, being a Darlington supporter gives a unique perspective, with Darlo one of the few teams to have 2 spells in the Conference, one back in 1989/90 and another one started just this season. It’s easy to see the biggest difference, and that’s the quality of the teams in the Conference. Getting promoted to Division 4 is a much tougher proposition now than in the first few years since automatic promotion/relegation was introduced.

Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, the Conference was full of amateur or semi-professional sides, so a relegated team that maintained it’s full professional status was at an enormous advantage, and was considered a much bigger club that the rest of the teams in the League. Now however, there are many "big" clubs with long Football League traditions who would consider their natural place to be at least Division 4, but find themselves stuck in the Conference year after year. Clubs like Mansfield, York City, Wrexham, even Luton who were in Division 1 and winning the Littlewoods Cup during this 25 year period. Add in up and coming traditionally Non-League clubs such as Crawley, and "Phoenix" clubs like AFC Wimbledon or Newport County trying to restore former glories, and the amount of clubs seen as legitimate promotion contenders who wouldn’t look out of place in division 4 is now over half the division.

How did we get here? Well, I’d say there have been 4 distinct phases, the first of which is 1987-1992.

1987-1992

This period showed the gulf that still existed between Division 4 and the Conference. Every relegated team went one of two ways, either completely out of business (Aldershot, Newport County, Maidstone) or won their league status back almost immediately. Lincoln City and Darlington were both promoted in their first season, Colchester in their second, the only traditional Conference club competing was Barnet, who finished second three times before finally clinching their promotion in 1991.

1993-1996

This period was one of stagnation, but was also the period that really kick-started the increasing of quality and depth in Conference. Due to teams going out of business and the Football League expanding to 94 clubs, only one team dropped into the Conference between 1991 and 1996, Halifax Town in 1993, so it was wide open for the traditional Conference teams to take advantage and grab the promotion place available. Wycombe Wanderers did just that in 1992-93, under Martin O’Neill, they were a class apart from the rest of the league, winning by 15 points, but after that, the limitations of Conference teams were exposed.

Kidderminster, Macclesfield and Stevenage Borough were champions from 1994-96, but all were denied promotion due to their grounds not meeting Football league regulations. This forced these clubs, and others with Football league ambitions to develop their grounds, and as well more teams went fully professional in a bid to secure promotion, thus increasing the quality of the Conference as a whole.

1997-2002

From 1997 onwards, promotion and relegation resumed with no-one else barred from promotion, but unlike 87-92 this time the Conference was ready to compete. This was partially due to the stronger Conference teams of recent years still being there, as well as due to many of the relegated clubs being in financial dire straits and needing to steady themselves at Conference level before being able to compete. Macclesfield and Kidderminster both won again during this time and were actually promoted, joined in this period by Rushden and Diamonds and Boston United, both benefitting from an aggressive financial approach, and a Steve Cotterill inspired Cheltenham Town.  The only former Division 4 team to win promotion during this time was Halifax Town, and they’d been in the Conference for 4 years already.

These teams were replaced by Hereford, Doncaster, Scarborough, Chester, and returnees Barnet and Halifax, so now rather than being the one big fish in the pond, any relegated team had plenty of other big teams to be competing against, a quick return would never be easy again.

2003- Present

In 2003, a quick return was made a little easier as a second promotion relegation spot was opened up, to the winner of the playoff between the 2^nd-5^th placed teams, and initially the big clubs took advantage, with 5 of the 6 clubs promoted from 2003-05 having previously been relegated, with Yeovil Town as the only exception, and Carlisle and Shrewsbury both taking advantage of the playoffs to bounce back at the first attempt.  Since then though things have evened off to an almost 50/50 split with 6 of 10 clubs, if you include Accrington Stanley and the new Aldershot club which I am, being traditional Conference clubs.

Perhaps the most remarkable stat, and testament to the new strength of the Conference, is that out of the 16 teams promoted in this period, only 1 of them, Chester City, have so far returned. The 16 relegated teams did include Kidderminster, Rushden and Boston, and 5 of the "big" clubs have earned their way back to Division 4. That leaves 8 teams that would consider themselves a Football League team languishing in the Conference, a number that’s only going to increase over the years as the Conference resembles more and more a 5th division rather than the huge dropoff it represented back in the 1980’s.  It used to be that the relegated team would become an automatic favourite for promotion, that is clearly no longer the case.

Coming up:
Part 2:  Looking at Division 4 and how the promoted teams have fared.