Latest news with #ChrisAgutter
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Six-way title tilts and angry Bulls: non-league football stories you may have missed
Bury break a record Six years after Bury were expelled from the league, last weekend they smashed a North West Counties league record by attracting a crowd of 8,719 to Gigg Lane as they sealed the first promotion since they were reborn by thrashing Burscough 4-0, a 15th successive victory. A measure of this achievement: the previous record crowd, the 6,023 who watched FC United of Manchester lose 1-0 to Great Harwood Town, was set in April 2006 (the 5,834 that saw Bury draw 2-2 with Ramsbottom United on Boxing Day sits at No 3 on the list); only one team in non-league football, Southend in the division above the division above the division above the division above them, have had more people at a game this season; Bury's average attendance in the ninth tier of English football, 3,315, is bigger than that of five teams in League Two and one in League One, as well as seven in the Portuguese top flight; that record attendance was 2.7 times larger than the total attendance at the other 11 games played in their division on the final day. A couple of other familiar names with big fanbases also hope to end the season with a celebration: Scunthorpe United, with the fourth-biggest average attendance in non-league football, are two points behind Kidderminster Harriers and Brackley Town in the hunt for a single automatic promotion spot in National League North (though Brackley are at home to rock-bottom Farsley Celtic, who are on a run even sillier than Bury's having lost their past 17 league games), and Torquay, fifth in the attendance table, are in the National League South wild shake-up. Six-way title tussle The final day dawns for National League South with fully 25% of its teams capable of winning it. Truro City go into it above Torquay at the top because their goal difference is better by two (they have scored one more goal), Eastbourne Borough and Worthing are a further point back, and Boreham Wood and Dorking Wanderers are two behind them (with the division's best and second-best goal difference respectively). Disappointingly none of the teams play any of the others on the last day, with the pick of the fixtures Truro's against St Albans City, who need to do better than Salisbury (the two are level on points but Salisbury's goal difference is better by one) to stay up. A few weeks ago it looked as if the title was Worthing's to win: on 15 March they had won their past five, led the league by four and had a game in hand on every other side in the top 10. 'We're very hard to play against at the moment and I think we're improving, we're getting better,' their manager, Chris Agutter, said after they beat Hemel Hempstead Town that day. 'We're becoming more ruthless as well. We just need to keep working hard, and the results touch wood should keep going in the right direction.' Since then: two wins, two draws, three defeats. They end their season at Enfield, who could go down if Salisbury and St Albans win. Finest margin call Also quite exciting: the Isthmian Premier, where the top three sides have the same number of points (wafer-thin margins here: Billericay Town lead Horsham by a single goal of goal difference, and have scored two more, with Dartford needing both to slip up; if Billericay and Horsham were to end up level on points, goal difference and goals scored Horsham would go up on games won). While in fifth and sixth Dover Athletic and unexpected promotion contenders Chichester City, also level on points, have a playoff playoff at Oaklands. Bulls vent anger The race for the Combined Counties Premier Division South title could hardly have been more exciting going into the final round of fixtures last weekend: Jersey Bulls led Redhill on goal difference, with Whyteleafe one point behind. The Bulls, the only one of those three playing at home, had sold out Springfield Stadium for the visit of Sandhurst. But on the Friday night they were informed that they were being deducted three points and fined £120 for fielding an illegible player in last month's 4-0 win over Tooting & Mitcham. 'We understand the frustration, the anger, and the disbelief from supporters. We feel it too,' the club said in a statement. 'When we started this club, we had nothing but the dream of giving our island a football team it deserves, one that we hoped our wonderful island community would take to its hearts, and one that we knew could be successful in the English leagues. That dream is not over. We have achieved so much in such a short space of time that we must not let an error, a technicality, and a decision that is out of our hands divide us.' For most of the final afternoon Whyteleafe, who led Fleet Town from the 12th minute, were going up, only for Redhill to score a 93rd-minute winner and pip them, but still the identity of the champions is unknown. The Bulls, who also won on the final day, have submitted an appeal, saying there is 'significant mitigation' concerning a 'lack of clarity on the number of yellow cards' (the situation does, to be fair, sound a bit confusing: after the player picked up his 10th booking of the season he was left out for two games before returning to the team. But it turned out that one of those 10 bookings didn't count because it came in the FA Vase, which meant he was not officially suspended until after his next one, his first after the club thought he had been suspended). The league is investigating and the playoffs – due to get under way on Saturday – have been postponed. Keeping it Real Real Bedford's march towards inevitable Premier League glory continues, the club having long since wrapped up the Southern League Division One Central. It is the club's third league title in as many years since they were bought by Bedfordian, podcaster and crypto enthusiast Peter McCormack, who declared at the time that the purchase was 'part of a childhood dream to own a local Bedford club' and that 'I've always wanted to bring league football to the town … I am a Bitcoiner, we aim big'. A £3.5m investment from the Olympic rowers and crypto traders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, announced last year, was finalised in February, and in the first match the now co-owners' attended the team beat Kings Langley 1-0 to seal promotion (on the same day Real Bedford Women beat London Seaward 11-1 to win their own second successive league title). The empire is still growing: last month McCormack gave the club a sibling town centre cafe, Real Coffee. A goal difference of -152 Spare a thought for Welton Rovers of the Western League Premier Division (but not for long), who ended with four points from 38 matches, one win and a goal difference of -152. That win was a riproaring 7-4 victory over St Blazey in February which ended their worst period of the season, four games which they lost by an aggregate score of 32-1. If you think you could do better, they advertised for a new first-team manager on Monday. Also spare a thought for Sittingbourne, who became only the second Isthmian South East team since 2018 (when there were two more of them, so four extra games) to reach 100 points but still won't be rewarded with automatic promotion. That's because the first, Ramsgate, also did it this year, and are on 108. They play each other on Saturday.
The Guardian
25-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Six-way title tilts and angry Bulls: non-league football stories you may have missed
Six years after Bury were expelled from the league, last weekend they smashed a North West Counties league record by attracting a crowd of 8,719 to Gigg Lane as they sealed the first promotion since they were reborn by thrashing Burscough 4-0, a 15th successive victory. A measure of this achievement: the previous record crowd, the 6,023 who watched FC United of Manchester lose 1-0 to Great Harwood Town, was set in April 2006 (the 5,834 that saw Bury draw 2-2 with Ramsbottom United on Boxing Day sits at No 3 on the list); only one team in non-league football, Southend in the division above the division above the division above the division above them, have had more people at a game this season; Bury's average attendance in the ninth tier of English football, 3,315, is bigger than that of five teams in League Two and one in League One, as well as seven in the Portuguese top flight; that record attendance was 2.7 times larger than the total attendance at the other 11 games played in their division on the final day. A couple of other familiar names with big fanbases also hope to end the season with a celebration: Scunthorpe United, with the fourth-biggest average attendance in non-league football, are two points behind Kidderminster Harriers and Brackley Town in the hunt for a single automatic promotion spot in National League North (though Brackley are at home to rock-bottom Farsley Celtic, who are on a run even sillier than Bury's having lost their past 17 league games), and Torquay, fifth in the attendance table, are in the National League South wild shake-up. The final day dawns for National League South with fully 25% of its teams capable of winning it. Truro City go into it above Torquay at the top because their goal difference is better by two (they have scored one more goal), Eastbourne Borough and Worthing are a further point back, and Boreham Wood and Dorking Wanderers are two behind them (with the division's best and second-best goal difference respectively). Disappointingly none of the teams play any of the others on the last day, with the pick of the fixtures Truro's against St Albans City, who need to do better than Salisbury (the two are level on points but Salisbury's goal difference is better by one) to stay up. A few weeks ago it looked as if the title was Worthing's to win: on 15 March they had won their past five, led the league by four and had a game in hand on every other side in the top 10. 'We're very hard to play against at the moment and I think we're improving, we're getting better,' their manager, Chris Agutter, said after they beat Hemel Hempstead Town that day. 'We're becoming more ruthless as well. We just need to keep working hard, and the results touch wood should keep going in the right direction.' Since then: two wins, two draws, three defeats. They end their season at Enfield, who could go down if Salisbury and St Albans win. Also quite exciting: the Isthmian Premier, where the top three sides have the same number of points (wafer-thin margins here: Billericay Town lead Horsham by a single goal of goal difference, and have scored two more, with Dartford needing both to slip up; if Billericay and Horsham were to end up level on points, goal difference and goals scored Horsham would go up on games won). While in fifth and sixth Dover Athletic and unexpected promotion contenders Chichester City, also level on points, have a playoff playoff at Oaklands. The race for the Combined Counties Premier Division South title could hardly have been more exciting going into the final round of fixtures last weekend: Jersey Bulls led Redhill on goal difference, with Whyteleafe one point behind. The Bulls, the only one of those three playing at home, had sold out Springfield Stadium for the visit of Sandhurst. But on the Friday night they were informed that they were being deducted three points and fined £120 for fielding an illegible player in last month's 4-0 win over Tooting & Mitcham. 'We understand the frustration, the anger, and the disbelief from supporters. We feel it too,' the club said in a statement. 'When we started this club, we had nothing but the dream of giving our island a football team it deserves, one that we hoped our wonderful island community would take to its hearts, and one that we knew could be successful in the English leagues. That dream is not over. We have achieved so much in such a short space of time that we must not let an error, a technicality, and a decision that is out of our hands divide us.' For most of the final afternoon Whyteleafe, who led Fleet Town from the 12th minute, were going up, only for Redhill to score a 93rd-minute winner and pip them, but still the identity of the champions is unknown. The Bulls, who also won on the final day, have submitted an appeal, saying there is 'significant mitigation' concerning a 'lack of clarity on the number of yellow cards' (the situation does, to be fair, sound a bit confusing: after the player picked up his 10th booking of the season he was left out for two games before returning to the team. But it turned out that one of those 10 bookings didn't count because it came in the FA Vase, which meant he was not officially suspended until after his next one, his first after the club thought he had been suspended). The league is investigating and the playoffs – due to get under way on Saturday – have been postponed. Real Bedford's march towards inevitable Premier League glory continues, the club having long since wrapped up the Southern League Division One Central. It is the club's third league title in as many years since they were bought by Bedfordian, podcaster and crypto enthusiast Peter McCormack, who declared at the time that the purchase was 'part of a childhood dream to own a local Bedford club' and that 'I've always wanted to bring league football to the town … I am a Bitcoiner, we aim big'. A £3.5m investment from the Olympic rowers and crypto traders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, announced last year, was finalised in February, and in the first match the now co-owners' attended the team beat Kings Langley 1-0 to seal promotion (on the same day Real Bedford Women beat London Seaward 11-1 to win their own second successive league title). The empire is still growing: last month McCormack gave the club a sibling town centre cafe, Real Coffee. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Spare a thought for Welton Rovers of the Western League Premier Division (but not for long), who ended with four points from 38 matches, one win and a goal difference of -152. That win was a riproaring 7-4 victory over St Blazey in February which ended their worst period of the season, four games which they lost by an aggregate score of 32-1. If you think you could do better, they advertised for a new first-team manager on Monday. Also spare a thought for Sittingbourne, who became only the second Isthmian South East team since 2018 (when there were two more of them, so four extra games) to reach 100 points but still won't be rewarded with automatic promotion. That's because the first, Ramsgate, also did it this year, and are on 108. They play each other on Saturday.
BBC News
28-03-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Is this the closest title race in England?
If Liverpool, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest, Chelsea and Manchester City were separated by just three points with six games to go everyone would be saying how this could the greatest finish in Premier League drop from the glamour of the top flight to the sixth tier of English football and that is exactly what is going on now in National League South. It is probably the closest league in England right now - maybe in Europe - as a mixture of teams you may have heard of - and some you may not - battle it out for one automatic promotion place and the best chance of home advantage in the play-offs. So who will come out on top and out of Worthing, Truro City, Eastbourne Borough, Dorking Wanderers and Torquay United in the race for a place in the National League? Home advantage for leaders Worthing "We always felt that if we could get through those first seven games with a half-sensible points return then it could potentially set us up for a positive end to the season," Worthing manager Chris Agutter tells BBC Radio Sussex. The Rebels are top of the table - although they have seen a four-point lead with a game in hand all-but wiped out thanks to successive losses against relegation-threatened Welling United and mid-table Hornchurch in the past few days. But the fact they are in first at all is something of a feat seeing as they started the season with six successive away games due to construction work at their Woodside Road they took 11 points from a possible 18 on the road - their only loss was a 5-0 thrashing at their nearest rivals Truro City. With four home matches in their final six fixtures you would probably put Agutter's side down as favourites - although they still have to face three of the current top five. "It felt like it wasn't as positive as what it could have been because we didn't win every game," he says, of his side's start to the season."But in terms of playing away from home and the travelling that we had to deal with, if you actually looked at it from a logical viewpoint you think, 'actually, that's a decent points return'."We had an unbelievable Christmas period where we played seven of the top eight and we took 30 points from 36, so that was the period really where we won a lot of six-pointers to put us into this position." A first-ever Cornish National League side? Second-placed Truro City are probably the National League South's surprise package this season.A year ago they were facing a run of 13 games in 28 days to end the season after flooding at their temporary home, but managed to secure a 16th-placed finish, nine points above the relegation summer they lost manager Paul Wotton to nearest neighbours Torquay United and went and hired a man who has seen and done most things in the top end of non-league football - John has taken over a side that might have the lowest budget of the title chasers, but has the bounce of a brand new ground and relatively new the former Port Vale, Shrewsbury Town and Hartlepool United boss knows what it takes to go up at this level - he guided Macclesfield Town to the National League title in 2018 and led York City to promotion via the play-offs in National League North three years even in his more than two decades as a manager he has never known a title race quite like this one:"You can probably go down to sixth position and everybody's got a good chance of getting the top place," he tells BBC Radio Cornwall."The only thing for ourselves is, compared with the other teams and apart from Worthing, it's in our hands."If we were to win all the six games, then we win the league. It's not as simple as that, but it is in our hands now."We know we've had a good season, no matter what happens, so there's probably less pressure on us than other teams, and I'm sure there'll be one or two twists and turns before the end of the season, even though there's only six games to go." 'A year of drama for Torquay' Out of the sides gunning for promotion, Torquay United are the most recognisable. The Gulls spent 87 years in the bottom two tiers of the English Football League before relegation in then they have had their fair share of lows - defeat in the 2021 National League promotion final on penalties was followed by relegation to the sixth tier for the second time in last year they went into administration after then-owner Clarke Osborne stopped funding the club.A consortium of local businessmen took over and rebuilt a squad that had just one player and no manager. "This has been a year of drama for Torquay United and that's going to continue right down to the last kick of the ball on the last day of the season, it's extraordinary," co-chairman Michael Westcott tells BBC Sport. "Our goal has always been financial sustainability, yet at the same time we're ambitious and we felt we'd assembled a squad that could certainly compete in this league, and what good looked like for us at the beginning of the season was to get into the play-offs." Westcott's chance meeting with ex-Gulls manager Neil Warnock ended with the former Sheffield United, Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough boss, to name just a few of his clubs, coming on board as an advisor. And with the club's rich league history and average crowds more than 1,500 higher than the next best side, Westcott feels Torquay have been the team to beat this season."I guess our legacy precedes us and people still see us as the big fish," he says."When teams come to Plainmoor they raise their game because they're playing in front of crowds that a lot of their players have never played in front of before and we're the scalp that anyone in our league wants to have."We've had to battle that, but I think our league position reflects the budgets that we run."We might be perceived as a big club, but we're by no means running the largest budget in the league, there are several teams that are running much larger budgets than we are, and that's because we want to run the club responsibly."We need the club to be financially sustainable so we don't ever go back to the place we found ourselves in February last year." 'A very average league' Since the Covid-19 pandemic, National League South has seen some runaway winners. Last season Yeovil Town won the title by 11 points, while Ebbsfleet United were 20 points clear of second place in 2023 and Maidstone United finished first it by six points the year before. So why is it so close this season? "Genuinely I think it's a poor division," Dorking Wanderers manager and owner Marc White told BBC Radio side are three points off the top of the table having been relegated from the National League last season. "I think we're part of that poor division, I think we're not great. It's a very average league and average teams."But is it really that bad? Not necessarily, according to Worthing fan Hayden Baker."It's weird to say it's a lower quality league this year because you don't have a team running away with it in the same way that's happened in our previous two seasons - Ebbsfleet battered this league, Yeovil battered this league," he tells BBC Sussex."The overall quality of the league is a lot more consistent across the entire divisions."I think the difference between a team in the top six and a team that's say 16th or 17th, really isn't a great deal any more."There's so much ambition across the league where I think every team feels like they've got some sort of right or some sort of ambition to get into the National League."Even if the quality of the football is not what it should be, the excitement of such a close title race makes up for with so many sides in with a chance, who is to say who will be lifting the title come the final day of the season on 26 April.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Agutter spells out how Worthing have best chance of winning title
Chris Agutter says it is all about the team ethic for Worthing as they push for the title. The Rebels boss expects a tough test from Bath City at the Sussex Transport Community Stadium tonight (7.45pm). A win would take Rebels second in Vanarama National League south, a point behind Dorking Wanderers. But they will be aware such scripts are not always followed, as was shown against Farnborough last week. They bounced back on Saturday with a last-gasp win at Chelmsford with Bath were holding Eastbourne Borough to an ugly 0-0 draw. Agutter said: 'It will be the team that gets us over the line. 'A lot of individuals before Christmas got us into an amazing position. 'Loads of 4-3s and 3-2s and Danny Cashman at Boreham Wood and Jack Spong away at Weston. 'Whereas after Christmas, where we have been on this great run, the team is doing that. 'It will be the team over this final stretch that will give us the best chance to win the league.'. Tuesday (7.45pm unless stated) Sky Bet League One: Lincoln City v Crawley Town. Vanarama National League, south: Worthing v Bath City. Sussex Transport Senior Cup, semi-finals: Eastbourne Borough v Littlehampton (7.30pm, Culver Road). Isthmian League, premier division: Chatham v Hastings. Isthmian, south east: East Grinstead v Hythe (7.30pm), Beckenham v Three Bridges, Deal v Steyning. Southern Combination, premier: Crawley Down Gatwick v Pagham (7.30pm), Lingfield v Loxwood, Midhurst v Roffey.
