Welcome Stevenage!

[Panda]

Stevenage Borough will become the 134th* club to play in the Football League next season after clinching the Conference title today.

It's the second time they have won the Conference, having previously been champions in 1996 but denied promotion because their ground was not deemed to be of a high enough standard for the Football League.




* (Or 135th if you count Wimbledon and MK Dons as separate clubs. Or 136th if you count Aldershot and Aldershot Town as separate clubs)

[vastar iner]

They were robbed back in 1996. Naturally David Mellor was fulminating on 606 at the unfairness of it all.

Strangely enough he thought the rule was perfectly fair when Kidderminster were denied a couple of years before. "Should have spent the money on the ground rather than the team."

I suppose Kiddy was a bit far north, eh, Dave?

[Panda]

Stevenage's promotion completes the hat-trick of teams denied over their grounds in the 1990s finally making it into the Football League.

I doubt we'll ever see all the teams screwed over by the re-election process make it in...

[vastar iner]

Altrincham being the most egregious example. Missed out by one vote in 1980. And two of their promised voters failed to turn up; one because he got the time of the meeting wrong, the other because he was in the wrong room.

In one of those strange karma twists, the timing error representative was that of Luton Town, and the wrong room chap was an official with Grimsby. Come 2010-11 both might no longer be members. And the beneficiary of those incompetents was Rochdale...

[o]

Good luck to them, I'm glad to be rid of them, they always beat us, and are quite a big physical side, so should fair well in Div 2 next season. Tidy little ground, might have to visit sometime, now we need Luton up through the playoffs...