Stocksbridge Park Steels manager Chris Hilton has slammed the Northern Premier League over their botched attempt to restart the season.
The NPL announced at the beginning of last week that the campaign would remain on hold and be looked again after the Government’s review of the Tier allocations on December 16th.
However, the following day the NPL ordered a mandatory restart on Boxing Day of all days and allowed clubs to play on the Saturday (19th) if they so wished.
That went against a recent vote involving the NPL clubs who voted not to play whilst Tier 3 restrictions are in place.
As a result the statement triggered an unprecedented insurrection by member clubs who in some cases (Sutton Coldfield) refused to play on Boxing Day and for the foreseeable future because of the financial concerns – capacity is limited to 150 and no bar or tea bars can be opened.
The NPL have since reversed the decision to force clubs to play and Hilton has been unimpressed with the league bosses.
“It has been absolute farce and shambles,” Hilton told Non League Yorkshire.
“The original email said we’d have a vote on it and then they’d review things on the 16th and look at restarting if everyone agreed.
“Then within a day or so later, no email to the clubs, just a tweet you can play on the 19th. We were like ‘what’?
“You then had the other two leagues – the Isthmian and Southern Leagues – they’d have postponed things until January minimum because of Tier 4.
“The NPL have said if you want to play Boxing Day or New Year’s Day it is up to the clubs. They have took no responsibility. It is basically you can do what you what.
“The Boxing Day games were originally mandatory but now it is optional – you can’t run a league like that. We should all be doing the same thing.
“The communication from the league is nil. Everything is a last minute decision and they don’t want to talk the clubs in our league to see what they think.
“It just seems they want to get games played and it doesn’t matter whether it costs clubs money they haven’t got. It is a ‘as long games are played we’re happy’ attitude which is wrong.”
This was contradicted by the lack of fixtures played on Saturday and the amount scheduled for Boxing Day
Stocksbridge were meant to face Frickley Athletic on Boxing Day but that has been postponed and Hilton says for a lot of clubs, playing under Tier 3 rules could place them in position of financial jeopardy.
“When the original vote was taken the Southern League vote was closer than the NPL because all the northern teams were in Tier 3,” he said.
“I don’t know who these teams were who contacted the league to say they wanted to play on the 19th because there were no games played in my Division. In the North Division there were only five games played and in the Premier there was one.
“Who are all these clubs who contacted them? There’s been no transparency throughout.
“The deeper you look into the finances of playing games in Tier 3 you see that it would have been financial suicide for a lot of clubs if they had played with limited spectators, no away fans and no bar or tea bar revenue.
“It is not just the players’ wages you have to pay as you have everything else as well like match official fees.
“Then you have the volunteers who want to spend time with their families on Boxing Day and who are also in the vulnerable bracket in a lot of cases. We hardly had any volunteers available on Boxing Day anyway.
“At the end of the day whether we finish this league or not, the priority is that every club survives.”
Hilton adds that the situation shows the growing need for financial assistance.
“This has been the issue all along,” he said.
“Grassroots football, Step 7, have been allowed to have spectators since the beginning.
“The so-called elite (National League) clubs have had funding per month so they could play behind closed doors so they could start their season.
“Us classed as non-elite in the middle have had nothing other than being told we can have a loan. No club is going to take that loan and pay interest on it because you’d just be putting debt on debt.
“How does a club survive on that? Non League football in terms of non-elite has been left to fend for themselves. We’ve not been helped at all.”
With either a national lockdown or Tier 4 restrictions rolled out further across the country looming due to escalating numbers of confirmed covid-19 cases, a full return of the NPL in the short-term seems unlikely.
Stocksbridge, for instance, have only played nine times in the Division One South East so Hilton is beginning to fear the worse for the campaign.
“We said right at the start of the season that we were going to have to be flexible and there were going to be lots of challenges to get the season finished,” he said.
“We were in a far better position last season when it didn’t get finished than we are now.
“The clubs in Tier 4 can’t train, players who live in a Tier 3 area can’t travel into a Tier 4 area if they play for a club in a Tier 4 area.
“There’s a lockdown coming in January, definitely. I can see us locked down. Hopefully I’m wrong but I can’t see us kicking a ball until the end of January, maybe February which is going to be too late to get all the games in.
“With all the best will in the world of playing Saturday-Tuesday from February to May, it would be hard.
“You still have the bad weather that we’re getting now. We had to cancel an in-house game two weeks ago because of snow.
“It is going to be really difficult and to have any chance of finishing the league we need to start in January.
“If there’s a lockdown on the way which everything is pointing towards then I just don’t know how they will be able to finish the league until they have a plan b?
“They may have a plan b where we go into mini leagues and they regionalise it and have two winners of each league get promoted and the other two from each league go into a play-off.
“I don’t know have the answers. The league haven’t discussed anything with the clubs as to what they want to do.”
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