For May 5th I'm going back just two years to the National League North Play-Off Semi-Final between Brackley Town and Spennymoor Town.
You're possibly wondering why I went to this particular game? Well as I've said in previous articles, I just love the drama of Play-Off football. Also I can get to Brackley's St James' Park in about 40 minutes from my home and the game was played on a Sunday when there wasn't a lot else on!
Play-Offs were introduced into the Football League as long ago as 1987. To me, they still feel like a recent innovation, but if you're under 40 then you probably can't remember anything else. Initially they attracted considerable criticism. Tinkering with tradition is always viewed with deep suspicion by the diehards. That's a tradition in its own right! The tinkering in recent years feels as if it has escalated and I'm not sure if some of the major changes that have taken place recently can even be classed as "tinkering". The driver for many of the changes is surely money. Even changes to the laws of the game tend to be targeted at making "the product" more attractive and therefore more saleable. Not that that makes them automatically wrong. The argument against the Play-Offs seems to have dissipated in recent years however and Play-Offs are here to stay.
2018/19 season in National League North was something of a disaster for my team, York City who, despite much greater resources than nearly every other team in the league, finished in the bottom half of the table. Not even a Play-Off place for their troubles and it was certainly not acceptable to the fans. City finished 19 points behind third placed Brackley Town and 18 behind fourth placed Spennymoor Town (their highest ever finish) despite both clubs being much more modest in size. Stockport County, probably the only other club in the division with sizeable resources, finished as Champions and were the one team to gain promotion automatically. The sides placed between second and seventh had to go through the Play-Offs to decide the winner of other promotion place.
Spennymoor had already taken care of Bradford (Park Avenue) in the first Play-Off eliminator and now met Brackley in the Semi-Final for the right to meet wither Chorley or Altrincham in the Final. It was arguably the biggest game in their history. The Moors (or Moo-ers in local dialect) are a phoenix club which rose from the ashes of former club Spennymoor United and they started out in the Northern League Division 2 in 2005 (the 10th level of the English Football pyramid) and have been promoted four times since then to the lofty heights of the National League North. The majority of that journey and all the promotions were overseen by manager and former Spennymoor United favourite Jason Ainsley who has a great reputation in the game in the North East as a result. Strangely Ainsley stepped down last year having become the longest serving manager in the top seven levels of English football. I suspect we haven't seen the last of him.
Critics of the Play-Offs will point to instances where a team just misses out on automatic promotion and ends up losing to a side who ended the regular season in sixth or seventh position and miles off the pace. My own view is that whilst the higher placed team has shown greater consistency throughout the season, they may be past their peak whereas the side further down the table may have suffered from a bad start and is now the team in form and more likely to go places in the following season. Let them face each other and we'll see which is the better side!
With a cracking atmosphere due to the massed ranks of the travelling Spennymoor fans amongst a crowd of 1,271, the match itself was an exciting but nervous affair. Brackley were the better side in the regulation 90 minutes but both sides had chances to score. It remained 0-0 however and the game went to extra time. Spennymoor introduced former York City favourite Adam Boyes to no avail and, after a further half an hour, the season would come down to a penalty shootout. It was great to see the two managers Kevin Wilkin and Jason Ainsley shaking hands and wishing each other all the best ahead of the penalties - good sportsmanship in the eye of the storm! With Brackley leading 4-2 in the shootout it looked all over for Moors but wait, not so fast! Brackley's Ndlovu skied what would have been the winning penalty and Adam Boyes scored Spennymoor's fifth penalty to make it 4-4. Now it was down to sudden death. Another satellite buster from Brackley and it was left to Moors' Lewis Hawkins to clinch it in dramatic style. Cue bedlam and Moors had a date with Chorley in the Play-Off Final! Did I say that I love Play-Offs?
CRB Match No 2305
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