National League North 2023-24

[Andy Butler]

Well done to Marine. Looking forward to a visit there. Any info on Needham Market? I had never heard of them until yesterday. Are any of the promoted teams a threat to the top half of the league?

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

It will be interesting to see how marine work it with Southport and Chester who will take large followings.

Saying that Radcliffe ground isn’t much better and may need work going forward but they have room to expand and worst case scenario bury nearby.

They could always use Goodison soon.

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

Is it well deserved? Better team on the day - but surely Scunthope 'deserve' to go up. Boston won 2 games on pens after they seemed second best on the radio commentry, then won the final fair and square. Scunthorpe much the better side over the season.

And yes, I know that's how the playoffs work... I've seen a lot of them.

It’s deserved because they did what they needed to, but they will have to realise very quickly it isn’t a case of ‘back where belong’ or any of that claptrap and understand they have some enormous work to do and if they do this they can be fine.

For me Boston wasn’t like a kiddy last year or York previously, they scraped into the play offs in poorest form of the six sides involved then just ‘clung on’ in the first two games and went through on the lottery of penalties.

They did then finally deliver when 1-0 down in the final where I’ll be honest I expected it over for them as I never seen them scoring in any of the games but they did.

But in regards of play offs they had maybe the hardest 3 game route any side has had so to overcome that and be up takes a lot of credit.

Have felt 4 of the 6 sides were maybe strong enough if they went up and the other two were Curzon and Boston who would require a lot of work if promoted.

The good thing for Boston is they have a nice new ground, revenue streams and a solid fanbase so can push on if they work on their side in the summer.

Kidderminster will be a good warning to them of how tough it can be

 

[Ninety Per Cent]

Who’s coming into the North next season? Kidderminster and Oxford maybe?

 

[Bottega Don]

Is it well deserved? Better team on the day - but surely Scunthope 'deserve' to go up. Boston won 2 games on pens after they seemed second best on the radio commentry, then won the final fair and square. Scunthorpe much the better side over the season.

And yes, I know that's how the playoffs work... I've seen a lot of them.

They won the three most important games of the season so I think they deserve to go up. We were the better side for all season but we bottled it when it mattered so we got what we deserved

Boston were a really good side as well, one of the best we played all season.

 

[Swedes]

It will be interesting to see how marine work it with Southport and Chester who will take large followings.

Saying that Radcliffe ground isn’t much better and may need work going forward but they have room to expand and worst case scenario bury nearby.

They could always use Goodison soon.

They gave Wrexham 350 tickets for an FA Cup tie there 2-3 years ago, so I can see a similar allocation being given to any side with a large away following. Due to locality and ease of access we could comfortably take more than that, and Chester could easily take double that. I can see it being season ticket holders only for us, with maybe a few spare for those without season tickets to fight over.

 

[JE93]

Who’s coming into the North next season? Kidderminster and Oxford maybe?

Barring any drama at the AGM Cup, I'd imagine next seasons NLN will be:

Alfreton
Brackley
Buxton
Chester
Chorley
Curzon Ashton
Darlington
Farsley Celtic
Hereford
Kidderminster
Kings Lynn
Leamington
Marine
Needham Market
Oxford City
Peterborough Sports
Radcliffe
Rushall Olympic
Scarborough
Scunthorpe
South Shields
Southport
Spennymoor
Warrington Town

Rushall have been very quiet about their required ground improvements, which I presumes means they've been given a second extension. Otherwise they'd be singing on social media and showing them off as being done. Or shouting to high heaven that they've stayed up on the pitch but been relegated off it. Hush hush approach seems to indicate another extension.

 

[Josh Butler]

Regarding marines ground. In 2010, we couldve won the league there and it was when a typical home gate for them was 400, there were turnstiles which gave us the really narrow side terrace and the open end. Access to the bar seemed shared and they just had the seated end

Not sure how they would segregate nowadays with their higher home support. As I don't recall any turnstiles just for the open terrace

Doubt there's a more hemmed in ground to anywhere else. Absolutely no room to work with

 

[High Peak Blue]

They gave Wrexham 350 tickets for an FA Cup tie there 2-3 years ago, so I can see a similar allocation being given to any side with a large away following. Due to locality and ease of access we could comfortably take more than that, and Chester could easily take double that. I can see it being season ticket holders only for us, with maybe a few spare for those without season tickets to fight over.

I could see us wanting 1000, especially if we were doing well at the time. We took well over 600 to Tamworth this time round, despite our poor run.
It will be interesting who fancies the outing to Needham Market though, especially on a February Tuesday evening

 

[Darlo On Tour]

Regarding marines ground. In 2010, we couldve won the league there and it was when a typical home gate for them was 400, there were turnstiles which gave us the really narrow side terrace and the open end. Access to the bar seemed shared and they just had the seated end

Not sure how they would segregate nowadays with their higher home support. As I don't recall any turnstiles just for the open terrace

Doubt there's a more hemmed in ground to anywhere else. Absolutely no room to work with

Visiting Marine it"s like an expedition to the antarctic especially with a fixture in the winter.

Memory serves me right I do recall the ground being 3-sided, whether that"s changed over the years, not sure?

Segregation will be very difficult unless the ground has improved?

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

I think as sad as it sounds they will play a smart fixture list for them.

Expect probably curzon at home for them on Boxing Day or Warrington maybe, expect Southport and Chester to be midweek home games.

 

[Andy Butler]

Who is everyone's favourites for next season?

 

[Quakerz]

Who is everyone's favourites for next season?

Darlo will piss it as long as we can keep hold of Steve Watson.

And sign a load of good players.

And by "piss it" I mean hopefully finish top half.

One thing is for sure we will lose 1-0 to the most tedious team in the division, Brackley.

 

[Andy Butler]

Any info on Needham Market? Are they a money club? What is their stadium like?

 

[joethegill]

Any info on Needham Market? Are they a money club? What is their stadium like?

Small ground, a seated Main Stand on the clubhouse side, bit of covered terracing around the three other sides of the pitch but none of them full-length. Biggest bit is at one end where there is a reasonable terrace backing onto one of two clubhouses, the rest of the terracing is pretty much just hard-standing.

Clubhouse at the ground is decent enough if a bit tatty, and there's a all-weather pitch just next door which on my visit had Needham's U21s playing on it before the first team, so 2 games for the price of 1.

No idea about the financial side of it, but as a club they've had a successful few years with their longest ever FA Trophy run and FA Cup run in the last couple of years, plus obviously this promotion. I think they're just quite well run to be honest, and will almost certainly be a local beneficiary of Ipswich's success with regards to young loans.

 

[Bottega Don]

I imagine we will be one of the bookies favourites as we finished 2nd and are the biggest club in the league.

We’re such an unknown right now though due to our financial situation and rookie manager.

This has to be the year Chester really go for it with their not really being a big title favourite.

 

[Kearsley Pilgrim]

It’s deserved because they did what they needed to, but they will have to realise very quickly it isn’t a case of ‘back where belong’ or any of that claptrap and understand they have some enormous work to do and if they do this they can be fine.

For me Boston wasn’t like a kiddy last year or York previously, they scraped into the play offs in poorest form of the six sides involved then just ‘clung on’ in the first two games and went through on the lottery of penalties.

They did then finally deliver when 1-0 down in the final where I’ll be honest I expected it over for them as I never seen them scoring in any of the games but they did.

But in regards of play offs they had maybe the hardest 3 game route any side has had so to overcome that and be up takes a lot of credit.

Have felt 4 of the 6 sides were maybe strong enough if they went up and the other two were Curzon and Boston who would require a lot of work if promoted.

The good thing for Boston is they have a nice new ground, revenue streams and a solid fanbase so can push on if they work on their side in the summer.

Kidderminster will be a good warning to them of how tough it can be

Excellent post BigDave – your thoughts about how we arrived at the play-offs, went through them and, what we have to do now, agree exactly with the discussions I’ve had with some fellow supporters since last Saturday.

Kidderminster will, indeed, be a good warning.

We have some very good young players at the club, but how many are ready and capable of performing well week-in, week-out at a higher level will be something manager Ian Culverhouse and his coaches will need to think about. We then have to hope that the budget Culverhouse has at his disposal will allow some decent recruitment, and enough to at least get us to 5th bottom next season. Avoiding coming straight back down has to be the realistic hope I'd think of many of our supporters.

As you say, we were faced with 3 hard away play-off games, just as the goal scoring that had been so free-flowing in March (16 goals scored in 5 matches) had dried up. And, in all 3 games, we were the underdogs - we'd lost at Alfreton and Brackley in the league and drawn at Scunthorpe - and the home team was expected to win, so that may well have been a factor psychologically on all of them.

Going into April and the last 5 league matches, we had found ourselves sliding out of the play-offs as we took just 1 point from the first 3 of those games.

The defence – added to the superb form of goalkeeper Cameron Gregory – then became our real strength. In the last 7 games (including the 2 play-offs that went to extra-time) only 3 goals were conceded (all to Brackley as it turned out) with 5 clean sheets. Meanwhile, we did only score 6 goals in 7 games – and 2 of those were in the final.

To be fair to the defence, on their day they had been difficult to score against with 20 clean sheets in 46 games, though had a tendency to concede again when the opposition did score. The other 26 games saw 46 goals conceded.

So a busy summer ahead and an interesting and exciting season to look forward to.

Contrary to what some reports are saying, we are not going back to National League level after an absence of 14 seasons - we may have been in the National League North for 14 seasons, but our last game at this level was way back on 28th April 2002.

And, finally, just to add a bit of statistical symmetry.

When we lost to York City in the 2022 Play-Off Final, it was after doing the double over them in the league. This year we won the final against a team that had done the double over us!!

 

[Lucky Bobble]

Darlo will piss it as long as we can keep hold of Steve Watson.

And sign a load of good players.

And by "piss it" I mean hopefully finish top half.

One thing is for sure we will lose 1-0 to the most tedious team in the division, Brackley

Yawn.

 

[Quakerz]

Yawn.

Well, indeed.

 

[High Peak Blue]

I imagine we will be one of the bookies favourites as we finished 2nd and are the biggest club in the league.

We’re such an unknown right now though due to our financial situation and rookie manager.

This has to be the year Chester really go for it with their not really being a big title favourite.

For us it depends on how many of our better players we can hang on to. I expect Stanway and Williams to depart. Hopefully Burke will stay another year. Weeks is contracted for another year, but needs to be better than this year.
To be honest we threw it away this year. A lack of firepower and timid tactics, with no width, meant that we failed to score enough in the run in. It's fine having a tight defence, but it only gets you so far. We need to fix that to be competitive this time round.

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

On a curzon side it’s all about getting through the summer.

We don’t have the smallest budget in the league which is good, but we don’t have a massive one either and usually the summer is all about who we can keep than who we bring in…….there are a few clubs around who may try and poach players……Radcliffe, Chester, Macclesfield, Buxton or Southport.

But we do have some great advantages as a part time club, not many others at this level have, Ashton has very good east transport routes into central Manchester, lots of cheap housing and a massive wide variety of jobs for players going part time, plus decent training facilities……makes it attractive in that respect.

But we won’t match the wages so will see how many we lose, then comes the test for Mahon, he’s done well tactically but how is he at spotting quality part time players, a vital component here.

Mahon is also a massive issue, the guy on his day is still one of the best players in conference north as shown in the Chorley play off game where he frankly dominated and dictated both on and off field stuff…….but the reality is as manager he really needs to reduce his playing time and he is a massive gap to fill.

 

[Andy Butler]

Going to do predict the league for next season as I am pretty bored at work

1 Brackley
2 Scunthorpe
3 Kings Lynn
4 Chester
5 Darlington
6 Buxton
7 Radcliffe
8 South Shields
9 Needham Market
10 Scarborough
11 Curzon
12 Kidderminster
13 Southport
14 Marine
15 Alfreton
16 Chorley
17 Spennymoor
18 Rushall
19 Peterborough Sports
20 Farsley
21 Leamington
22 Oxford City

 

[Lucky Bobble]

They won the three most important games of the season so I think they deserve to go up. We were the better side for all season but we bottled it when it mattered so we got what we deserved

Boston were a really good side as well, one of the best we played all season.

Did you 'bottle' it? Or did you simply lose a penalty shootout against a team you were 13 points better than in the regualar season?

And in a league when the 2nd place team rarely ever goes up - 2019 Harrogate did - I not sure anyone has since.

 

[Lucky Bobble]

Going to do predict the league for next season as I am pretty bored at work

1 Brackley
2 Scunthorpe
3 Kings Lynn
4 Chester
5 Darlington
6 Buxton
7 Radcliffe
8 South Shields
9 Needham Market
10 Scarborough
11 Curzon
12 Kidderminster
13 Southport
14 Marine
15 Alfreton
16 Chorley
17 Spennymoor
18 Rushall
19 Peterborough Sports
20 Farsley
21 Leamington
22 Oxford City

You skipped Hereford & Warrington I think.

Leamington will struggle. If Oxford City keep their manager, they should be fine.

Brackley have very little chance of winning the league. They don't have the squad depth to manage the mid week matches as a part time team.

Will almost certainly be won by a full time team - I think Tamworth was just an aberation.

 

[Bottega Don]

Did you 'bottle' it? Or did you simply lose a penalty shootout against a team you were 13 points better than in the regualar season?

And in a league when the 2nd place team rarely ever goes up - 2019 Harrogate did - I not sure anyone has since.

I get what you mean but if we didn’t want the lottery of the penalties than we should have scored in 120 mins of football.

I’m not gonna criticise the playoffs cause we finished 2nd, we could easily be in the position Boston were in next year and I won’t be complaining if we shithouse our way up

 

[Ninety Per Cent]

Dion Semble Ferris released, hahahaha dog and duck standard player

 

[Bottega Don]

Dion Semble Ferris released, hahahaha dog and duck standard player

How would you know? You didn't go to any games

 

[joethegill]

Going to do predict the league for next season as I am pretty bored at work

1 Brackley
2 Scunthorpe
3 Kings Lynn
4 Chester
5 Darlington
6 Buxton
7 Radcliffe
8 South Shields
9 Needham Market
10 Scarborough
11 Curzon
12 Kidderminster
13 Southport
14 Marine
15 Alfreton
16 Chorley
17 Spennymoor
18 Rushall
19 Peterborough Sports
20 Farsley
21 Leamington
22 Oxford City

You've missed Hereford and Warrington

 

[Andy Butler]

You've missed Hereford and Warrington

Yeah for some reason I thought there was only twenty two teams in the league. Hereford and Warrington will finish 9th and 10th which takes Needham Market down to eleventh

 

[Andy Butler]

Dion Semble Ferris released, hahahaha dog and duck standard player

I thought he was a decent player of the bench. Could be a good signing for one of the better teams at this level.