The waiting and wondering is over – season 2019/2020 is officially cancelled – or is it?
On Thursday afternoon, the following puzzling statement appeared on the FA website;
“We have been working collaboratively with the National League System (NLS), the women’s football pyramid and the wider grassroots game since the outbreak of COVID-19 on how to conclude the 2019-20 season in the most appropriate way possible…”
“…The NLS and the women’s football pyramid were able to build a consensus amongst their leagues and, where possible, aimed to create a consistent approach across all leagues, whilst considering the unique characteristics of each individual league.”
“As a result, The FA and NLS steps three to six have reached a consensus that their 2019-20 season will now be brought to an end, and all results will be expunged. This will mean no promotion or relegation of clubs between NLS steps three to six, and no promotion to NLS step two…”
So the BetVictor League’s and SCEFL’s season are over but it’s still no clearer on the future of the National League’s three divisions which makes the rest of the FA’s statement particularly confusing. The statement goes onto state:
“With the 2019-20 Emirates FA Cup, Women’s FA Cup, Buildbase FA Trophy and Buildbase FA Vase all at advanced stages, we are reviewing all options as we seek to complete these competitions whenever it is safe and appropriate to do so. Clubs involved are close to reaching a major final and for those clubs and supporters we will do all we can to keep the Wembley dream alive.”
One of these clubs is of course our very own Corinthian FC. Boss Michael Golding was a frustrated man as he told KSN, “Its right that football is stopped at the moment as there’s a lot of more pressing issues other than football to worry about. But from a selfish point of view – if football’s the only thing that you have to worry about – then it is disappointing that it’s been decided so quickly…”
“… The boys are gutted – we went incredibly close last year and this year through no fault of our own we’ve had the season stopped where we’re the form side in the League – top on points per game and we would have gone top if we’d have won our game in hand.”
“Yet potentially we’ve still (as a result of this announcement) got the carrot of a trip to Wembley – no one really knows what to say or do at the moment!”
“Obviously, we’re happy that we’ve still got this outside chance of getting to Wembley and we’ll certainly cling to that but how realistic is it?”
“All football at Step Five has been stopped yet the FA still want to play the Vase games… how do we get the players to prepare for that properly?”
For our full interview with the Corinthian boss, please see the link below:
Picture supplied by Dave Budden.