Club to Support a Threesome with the Conference?

A lot of debate has been happening within the powers of league and conference about changing the format of two down and two up, to a three place drop and rise from league two and conference. And the press have hit the ground running with the story this week.

One MP Tim Farron, the Westmorland & Lonsdale Liberal Democrat, has presented an Early Day Motion to ask the question of both leagues of having a three up three down system put in place.

Although Conference clubs want a third promotion spot,  the chairman of League Two struggler’s Barnet Tony Kleanthous, recently stated he was in favour of a change and Wrexham chief executive David Roberts believes it is a idea shared by others. Roberts has said:-

“I think it is fair to say that all the Conference clubs are obviously keen to see three up, three down. And I think a lot of Football League clubs are now beginning to understand that needs to come in because there really is a log jam at the foot of the League Two table with the clubs coming up. There are clubs in the Conference worthy of a place in the Football League; you look at the movements between the other divisions, there are three clubs between all the other divisions – even four going up from the fourth tier to the third tier.

To have only two coming into the Football League, it is a case of people realising now that has to change and we have to help promote the case for change, and to make other clubs realise that coming into the Conference can also give them the opportunity to restructure their businesses and come out of the experience far stronger.

It has been debated over the months within the conference, a third place via play offs will only be allowed if the Football League voted in favour of the change. Roberts hopes that will be in place before the start of the 2013-14 season.

The offer of the new deal will see relegated teams receive a parachute payment for two seasons. This should offset the worries of a league teams falling in to hard times dropping into the conference league. If the vote goes to a three drop and up system, then it will be given to the championship and league one clubs for their say on the matter.  The chairman of Burton Albion, Ben Robinson, emphasized:-

it will take a lot of hard work to convince the majority of clubs.

On the other side it could spell out a future where there is a bigger split between top flight clubs and lower leagues due to the conference not having full timers within the that league. Revenue from TV rights are low as you enter that lower tier football. This system could see that money dropping further with championship and league one clubs getting a bigger bite of the revenue pie.

Of course it never used to be a promotion system. The bottom four clubs had to apply to the league to stay and the non league clubs would also apply. It then went to the vote. That was the only way non league clubs could break into the top 92.
This all changed in summer of 1986. An agreement was reached to have one automatic promotion and relegation place.

Then in 2003, a second promotion and relegation place was introduced, the second place was given to the winners of the Blue Square Bet Premier play-offs. It has become the biggest single match of the non-league calendar. Now we are faced again with this new system which has more questions than answers and will draw many to debate what’s best for the clubs in the future.

The questions arising from this debate will be what benefit will there be to Exeter City and the League in general? Is it a good idea or bad idea?

So far many clubs in league two are silent on this matter and Exeter have not released their thoughts on which way they would vote on if it went to a vote.