Bloated Combined Counties League Division One helps absolutely no one

Rinse and repeat.

24 teams seems an awful lot of football for a Step 6 Football Club to consider, but that’s what the Football Association have decided will happen in the Combined Counties League Division One next season.

24 teams. 46 matches each, before you consider league and county cup and the FA Vase. The Step with the most groundshares and typically the Step with the most games left to play at the end of the season.

That three teams could conceivably have been relegated at the end of last season – but have all been reprieved – only adds to the sense that this is a bloated division.

Last season, after a 44 games there were ultimately just two outcomes – Windsor & Eton and Eversley & California were promoted. A huge amount of matches to decide just two things.

The FA: Why no teams were relegated from the Combined Counties League Division One

The Combined Counties League Division One is comfortably the biggest Step 6 division in the country. Most are 20 teams or less and three have 22 teams.

This time last year I wrote: “The eye-watering moment though is when you realise all the noise about fixture congestion, weather, ground shares and number of matches that caused teams to play back-to-back-to-back matches in April has come to absolutely nothing.”

There seems to be no consideration that 46 games is an incredible commitment for part time players, management and volunteers that run clubs. It is diluting the quality of opportunity for everyone involved at this level of game.

The answer now seems to be “let’s make it worse.”