National League clubs charged for missing fixtures as season vote continues
13.02.2021
The 66 National League clubs are currently voting to determine their 20/21 season’s fate, as the extreme weather compounds with health and financial crises. Voting ends on February 28th 2021, as the date approaches, clubs across the country are breaking at the seams.
To date, the National League is charging at least six teams for breaching rule 8.39, a failure to fulfil a fixture. The charged teams, Bradford (Park Avenue), Chippenham Town, Concord Rangers, Dulwich Hamlet, Kettering Town, and Slough Town, play in the sixth tier of English football, the National Leagues North and South, on the very fringes of “elite sport”. According to the clubs in question, their decisions to miss the fixtures were not decisions at all, but circumstances forced upon them by the global health crisis and its handling by the footballing authorities.
The issues keeping the clubs from their fixtures are the very same that necessitated the vote on the season’s future in the first place. Many struggling clubs have already announced their vote in favour of concluding the league season, including the National League North’s Spennymoor Town, of County Durham. In a statement on their website, Spennymoor declared that they voted to null and void the season, and were “guided by one principle: ensuring the safety of our players, staff, volunteers, and supporters.” Of course, finances and safety become inextricable during the COVID pandemic, and Spennymoor cite the inconsistency or absence of any virus testing program at their level as a primary motivator for their null and void vote.
These same issues appear beyond the National League North, in Southern clubs in the league above like Dover Athletic. The club’s chairman Jim Parmenter resigned from the National League board last week, revealing a profound disagreement with their current conduct, and stressing the dire straits in which his club finds itself. Parminter recently told BBC Kent that “we have run out of money,” hinting at the need to immediately cease playing and furlough all staff before the club goes bankrupt.
As the voting continues, current estimates suggest that the National League North clubs lean towards null and voiding the season, but slim majorities in the National League and National League South may sway their competitions to continue. If this does occur, National League South clubs like Maidstone United will sink further into financial chaos.
Maidstone furloughed all their playing staff in the last week and fired their assistant manager Terry Harris. The club themselves labelled this latest circumstance “devastating.” Maidstone only found themselves relegated to the National League South in 2019. When National Lottery grants allowed the 20/21 season to commence behind closed doors, Maidstone openly criticised the grant’s unfair distribution between National League tiers. The distribution dramatically favoured the higher National League and failed to cover Maidstone’s missing gate revenue.
Following this spate of furloughs, Maidstone's manager Hakan Heyrettin expressed a sentiment echoing throughout non-league clubs and non-league steps. Heyrettin lamented that “we put our trust in the powers that be to deliver a viable funding package.” As of 2021, the package is yet to arrive.
In Heyrettin’s view, “the National League and DCMS (government Department for Culture, Media, and Sport) ought to take a long hard look at themselves.”
Maidstone’s co-owner and co-chairman Oliver Ash took to Twitter to express his resentment towards the National League, although he still sits as a member of the National League board. Quote-Tweeting a statement regarding the League’s charging of clubs who missed fixtures, Ash compared these latest developments to the violent politics of Robespierre during the French revolution.
In a statement sent to all 66 member clubs, the National League qualified the significance of these charges, confirming that “no fines or sanctions have been raised or recommended.” The statement called the current charges “merely a mechanism,” suggesting that each missed fixture will be assessed on a case-by-case basis after the current season vote concludes.
As the voting continues, these vague threats of fines, sanctions, and league expulsions hang over several stricken National League clubs. The latest worries join a raft of others, including the threat of financial insolvency and the developing pandemic. Perhaps as the voting concludes, the dust will settle and these struggling clubs will know their fate.
