It’s getting close now

With the season gets under way next weekend I thought I would have a look at a few things involving the division.

• Total approximate return millage for the 23 away games 5,400
• Average return millage 234
• Longest return Journey Barrow or Gateshead that are both approximately 600 miles
• Around 1/4 of the teams have Football League experience

Taking the map from the “Non League Matters” website if you were to split the country into 4 with a straight forward centre point of Birmingham you would have the following allocation

• North West (4) – Barrow, Wrexham, Chester, Altrincham
• North East (4) – Gateshead, York, Tamworth, Mansfield
• South West (3) – Kiddiminster, Forest Green Rovers, Salisbury
• South East (13) – AFC Wimbledon, Hayes & Yeading, Oxford, Luton, Kettering, Cambridge, Histon, Grays, Eastbourne, Crawley, Ebbsfleet, Rushden & Diamonds, Stevenage

So although we are now in a national division the majority of the games are still in the south east quarter of the country but it just reaches all boundaries of the south east region.

With most teams having finished or about to finish pre-season matches a couple of score lines surprised me a bit first up and one of note for us was Luton losing at Hampton & Richmond looking at the Luton site Mick Harford made a couple of interesting comments.

“We go to Hampton & Richmond on Saturday, and no disrespect to them, we want to take our players to a non-league ground and give them experience of playing against a very good side who have been unlucky not be promoted in the last two seasons”

I can only think of a couple of  grounds that come anywhere near to the “Non League ground”  level of Hampton. I wonder if Luton think that all non lague teams play like Hampton? Luton also managed to miss two penalties during the game.

There seemed to be a number of matches of teams we played last season against teams we play this season

• Bromley beat Grays 5-1.
• For Eastbourne Jamie Taylor scored twice in a 3-1 victory against Havant & Waterlooville
• Eastleigh beat Salisbury 1-0