The Northern Football Guide

Hello and welcome to this week’s Northern Football Guide. This week sees the welcome return of the top two divisions following on from the international break. It should be said though that it is still very enjoyable seeing our national team being good at football, I just wish that they could play more times over the weekend to offset the lack of quantity that the league so adeptly provides! On a personal note, I visited my 50 th football ground as I took in Barnet v Harrogate at The Hive Stadium. It certainly wasn’t the most memorable game aside from a coach load of Eton students populating the away end and doing no favours to Harrogate’s posh town reputation. On the weekend, I went to watch the Liverpool Legends game at Anfield. It was wonderful to see so many legends rolling back the years, especially the likes of Dida, Pirlo, Kaka and Cafu for AC Milan. A strangely sedate crowd enjoyed the spectacle and raised around £1 million for Liverpool’s Charity Foundation in the proces...

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Northern Football Guide. It may be an international week, but that doesn’t mean there is any shortage of football in League One and below. There has however been a couple of devastating news stories out of the non league this week. North Ferriby United have been wound up over unpaid bills. The demise coming only four years after their F.A. Trophy win. The finest hour of their 85-year history was a precursor to successive relegations, numerous relocation attempts and this ultimately sad end. I have no doubts that a successor club will soon appear and will be back on the Northern non-league football map in no time, hopefully without ruinous owners. Worrying news also from Tadcaster Albion, whose Ings Lane ground was flooded on Sunday after the adjacent River Wharfe burst it’s banks following persistent heavy rain the day before. Ironically, Tadcaster’s game was one of the few games to survive the rain in non-league this weekend. It r...