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Southend Manor and Stansted take to the field for their entertaining matchYesterday, I went to watch Southend Manor vs Stansted in the Essex Senior League. The league is a regional one in England, and is not a professional league, residing on the ninth tier of the English football ladder. Despite the (supposedly) low standard due to its low position in the football world, there are plenty of reasons why non-league football is well worth watching, particularly in England where the lower leagues are taken much more seriously by fans and players than elsewhere in the world outside the UK.Here are 7 reasons why, if you have the chance, you should check out some non-league football.
#1 Stadiums
Clearly, the stadiums in non-league football certainly don't have the facilities, size or glamour to match those that you'd find in the Premier League, but that isn't the point of non-league football. It's all about the charm, and the passion, which is better demonstrated at non-league stadiums than anywhere else in football.
Grounds like Clapton's Old Spotted Dog, or Forres Mechanics home ground of Mosset Park, have a certain element of comfort about them that simply can't be replicated by a bigger team with a bigger fan base. With the exception of SPL side Heart of Midlothian's Tynecastle (one of the best football stadiums anywhere in the world in terms of atmosphere), not enough professional outfits have a stadium that genuinely adds to the atmosphere.
Too many teams have very generic grounds that don't offer anything unique, and this is why it's a welcome change to see that nearly every non-league ground you visit will have a distinguishing feature. These sorts of small things only add to the occasion when you're attending a football match; you remember the entire day, not just the game being played on the field, and non-league clubs definitely have more memorable individual details than most professional ones.
#2 Supporting your local team
In the modern day, where loyalty seems to be a dying quality, it is of great comfort that there are still those people out there who seek to support their local sides rather than simply selecting a random big-name team to support, with no emotional attachment to them, simply because they think they'll win trophies.
The latter is no type of football fan, whereas the former is more likely to have some genuinely emotional and enjoyable experiences while supporting their local team, because of the history that's there and the attachment to the local area. There is a sense of pride when watching your local non-league team win, as you realise it is mainly comprised of people from the near surroundings and may even contain some friends, or you may even have played for this team as a youngster.
By contrast, most supporters of bigger clubs don't quite feel the same attachment towards their own team. You feel as though you're not only supporting your team, but also your town when you go to watch your local non-league team, and this feeling cannot be underestimated in a time where people are attempting to take the heart from football and treat it solely as a business.
#3 Occasional big team sightings
Fairly frequently, you will get a big team turn up at a non-league ground for a match. This is usually in the form of an FA Cup tie and this season has been no exception to the rule. We have already seen non-league Maidenhead Town, a side two divisions below professional level, hosting League 1 outfit Port Vale.
We also saw Notts County (the oldest remaining professional club in the world) travelling to and being knocked out of the competition by Salford City, who are at the same level as Maidenhead and are becoming well known for being part owned by Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and other former Manchester United players.
On top of this, big clubs often face local teams in pre-season friendlies, where they usually play a lot of younger players to give them some experience, although they occasionally put out a strong team, such as when Premier League Norwich City went to Billericay Town in 2011, a team who are 6 divisions below them.
2014/15 Scottish Cup winners Inverness Caledonian Thistle played a friendly against their local non-league team Clachnacuddin FC this past summer, with a number of players who played in the cup final also lining up on this day. For far lower prices, you can occasionally see some big teams/players, which leads me to the next slide.
#4 Prices
Ticket prices in English football are probably the worst thing about it. For all the things that make the English football pyramid the best in the world (I’m not talking about the Premier League, but the whole professional and non-league set up), the ticket prices drag it right back down. I checked the prices for West Ham's upcoming home game with Manchester City, and the absolute cheapest adult ticket in the ground is £60.
That's an absurd amount of money to regularly pay to watch the team they love, and many fans are forced not to watch their Premier League and Football League (which includes the Championship, League 1 and League 2) teams because of the horrendous prices, as West Ham are not alone in having high prices.
Compare this to the game I attended yesterday, Southend Manor vs Stansted, where the price of admission was only £6 for what turned out to be a fantastic match, with several late goals ensuring a 3-1 win for the home side. With action like this available at such cheap prices, it's well worth attending a match.
#5 Fairy tale stories
Non-league football does produce its fair share of fairy tales. There have been many, from Fleetwood Town rising out of non-league obscurity to now reside in League 1 (English football's third tier) to Gretna, a Scottish club who played in the English non-league system before switching to Scotland and, through a massive injection of money, gaining multiple promotions until they reached the Scottish Premier League, getting to a Scottish Cup final along the way too.
However, none probably outstrips that of AFC Wimbledon, a team formed in 2002 by fans of the old Wimbledon FC, who were outraged that their club had been moved 56 miles away to Milton Keynes and renamed MK Dons. With minimal funding, the club defied all the odds after starting life in the Combined Counties Premier Division (English football's ninth tier) by gaining promotion in five of the next nine seasons to reach professional football again in 2011.
The club remains in League 2 to this day and are just one division below the club they formed in protest of; MK Dons.
#6 Unexpected talent
People may laugh and say that there's no talent in non-league and that if the players were that good they'd be professional, but these people clearly have not watched enough football. Many players have risen through the non-league system to become professional stars in recent years.
Signed from non-league Grays Athletic, Freddy Eastwood scored a goal in 7.7 seconds and went on to grab a hat-trick on his debut for League 1 Southend United against Swansea City back in 2004. While no non-league player has made a debut quite that explosive, there are plenty of other examples of non-league talent making it big in football.
Dwight Gayle, currently in the Premier League with Crystal Palace, signed for the club in 2013 after starting his career at ninth tier Stansted, while Palace also signed striker Keshi Anderson earlier this year from eighth tier side Barton Rivers after a successful trial match.
Current Premier League top-scorer Jamie Vardy didn't even make it to professional football until Fleetwood Town signed him in 2011. The team were in the Conference then (now known as the National League, one league below professional level) and Vardy went on to win the league in his first season there, thus gaining promotion to League 2 and professional football. Other players to rise out of non-league to reach the Premier League include Chris Smalling, Charlie Austin and Troy Deeney. There is so much talent in non-league football, but people just don't see it.
#7 FA Cup runs
The FA Cup offers up some of the most romantic football in the world, and whilst to many, it begins in Round 3 when the Premier League teams come into play and games are shown on TV, it actually begins much earlier than that. There are multiple qualifying rounds and then rounds 1 & 2 to negotiate, and along the way, some great stories can happen.
Southend Manor (in the ninth tier of English football, just to remind you) very nearly made it to the First Round in the 2011/12 season, beating a number of higher ranked teams along the way before succumbing 3-1 to Kettering Town in a great game that took place soon after Arsenal's famous 5-3 win over Chelsea on the same day.
Perhaps the most famous FA Cup fairytale is that of Hereford United in 1971/72, who were at the time just a non-league Northern Premier League side, shocked the world and made it to the 4th round where they incredibly knocked out Newcastle United. They ended up being knocked out of the cup themselves by West Ham, but their performance against Newcastle lives on in British football folklore.
Stories like this just wouldn't be the same if the club involved were professional, and it's a testament to non-league football's strength that these teams and stories are being spoken about to this day. If there's one note I'd like to end this article on, it would simply be to reiterate my initial point; if you ever get the chance, definitely go and watch some non-league football!
