Oxford City vs Rochdale at Court Place Farm doesn’t have quite the same ring as Chelsea vs Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, but last Saturday’s match was important all the same.
At this level, you feel part of the match, which never happens in an executive box at the Emirates
‘The Hoops’, Oxford’s oldest football club, founded in 1882 when Gladstone was prime minister and Old Etonians won the FA Cup, were playing their first ever home game in the fifth tier of English football. Rochdale, whose 102-year membership of the Football League ended in May, were playing their first away game in the Vanarama National League. Seven hundred and eighty-one of us, including a spirited contingent from Lancashire, turned up to see the clash of the two sides and ‘The Dale’ claim a 1-0 victory with a 71st-minute goal. It was a far cry from the heavyweight battle at the Bridge at the weekend, but it was wonderful.
Non-League football has a buzz all of its own which for me, for the most part, beats the big-time Premier League games.
While it’s too much of a stretch to say ‘This is football as it used to be’, non-League matches still have the old ‘people’s game’ feel to them. Something the high-cost Premiership encounters between teams of millionaires lost years ago.
At Oxford City – where it’s £18 at the turnstiles with £13 concessions and £6 for students – you can move easily round the ground. You can get close to the players and the action. In fact you can stand right behind the goal if you want to. Conversations between fellow supporters start up spontaneously. On Saturday I bumped into an old friend who told me he had been to more than 130 grounds and was looking forward to a first-time trip to the Shay, home of FC Halifax Town, next week. I spent much of the second half chatting to a lifelong Hoops fan who had moved to Swansea but was there to watch his nephew, who was one of City’s subs.
At this level, you actually feel part of the match, which never happens if you’re in an executive box at the Emirates, or even just sitting down at the Etihad. Players shout ‘Man On’ and ‘Time!’ and of course a few choice expletives.
I first went to Oxford City games in the late 1970s with my father. Then, they played close to the city centre at the wonderfully atmospheric White House Ground, their home since 1900. The crowd were always an eclectic mix of town and gown; you could get in for 50p if you were a student. In 1971 they set a record with Alvechurch which will never be broken: their FA Cup tie took six matches and 11 hours to settle. Back then there were no penalty shoot-outs to decide things and you simply kept on playing replays until one side prevailed.
At the start of the 1980s, City made news again when England’s World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore was appointed manager. He was offered a £14,000 salary, a £5,000 signing-on fee and a Daimler. He didn’t bring success on the pitch – in fact City were relegated – but everyone remembers what a nice man he was.
Given the club’s history, it was especially traumatic when the landlords, Brasenose College, had the brass neck to boot City from the White House in 1988 to make way for housing. The club was homeless and had to rebuild almost from scratch, starting at park football level. After 30 years of slowly climbing the steps of the non-league pyramid, the Hoops (they play in the QPR colours) celebrated promotion to the National League in May. From near extinction to playing in just one division away from the EFL has to be one of football’s most remarkable comebacks. Rochdale, who were in League One only two years ago, came from the opposite direction. On Saturday the difference just about showed.
Packed with former EFL ‘Big Beasts’ such as Chesterfield (FA Cup semi-finalists in 1997), Hartlepool, York, Southend and even one side, Oldham Athletic, who were founder members of the Premier League in 1992, the National League has arguably never been stronger and Oxford City – attracting 700 or so paying spectators as opposed to Oldham’s 7,000 – will probably need another miracle to stay put.
Non-League used to mean amateur and then semi-professional, but today all but four of the 24 teams in ‘Step 1’ as it’s called (City, Dorking Wanderers, Maidenhead and Wealdstone ) are full-time professional. Foreign money too has been attracted. Last season’s champions, Wrexham, were famously bought in 2020 by the Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and have not looked back since.
Given the rocketing cost of season tickets higher up the League table, and the quality fare on offer down below, it’s no surprise that increasing numbers of fans are switching to non-League. Attendances in the National League were 18 per cent up last season, with more than three million going to matches. There’s even a dedicated national newspaper, The Non-League Paper, that has been published each Sunday since 1999.
Back in the 1970s, dropping out of the Football League was something of a death sentence. There was no automatic relegation and promotion, and the fate of the teams who finished near the bottom was decided by the other teams in a controversial voting process called ‘re-election’. But now, with the champions of the National League going up automatically, and the play-off places going down to seventh, a large number of teams and their supporters can realistically dream of making it into the EFL. Perhaps ‘The Dale’ will return at the first time of asking. After the match on Saturday, one of their fans was standing by his team’s supporters’ coach. A passing Oxford fan congratulated him on Rochdale’s victory and wished him all the best. ‘I hope you have a good season too,’ was the friendly reply. That’s another thing about non-League. It attracts genuine football people, who just love the sport whatever it brings.
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