Oxford is about 60 miles west of London and 75 miles south of Birmingham, with the nearest towns, Northampton and Reading, competing in the local league, and the second-biggest club will begin a journey of more than 350 miles over eight weeks over the next nine months in Lancashire on Saturday.
That fate befell Oxford City and they had suffered the same in the past. In 2012, City were promoted from the Southern League Premier to the Conference North for the first time, finishing sixth. It was three years before they joined the National League South, and after eight seasons there and one season in the upper country, they were back where they started.
This season, they will travel more than 6,600 miles to league games, an average of nearly 300 miles round trip, and from 300 miles to 2,575 miles in recent action in the National League South last season.
The Football Association divides the 48 sixth-placed teams evenly into two regional divisions each season. Its considerations are geographical, drawing boundaries between the 24 northern and southern teams. Even so, Oxford seems to be a strange case. The town of Hemel Hempstead, which has a team in the National League South, is slightly further north than Oxford.
However, Hemel Hempstead’s stadium is south of Oxford City. A National League spokesman said the location in question was “where the club is based, not the geographic location of an entire city,” and the average is 160 miles per game, about 3,700.With Truro City providing the longest away journey of most clubs in that division, the traveling schedule reaches around 11,300 miles.
Sam Cox is a manager facing challenges at Oxford. He ended last season as Wealdstone’s caretaker manager, earning his first full-time job.”We were the underdogs because of the logistics we were in,” he said.
Good margins make all the difference in an environment of changing attitudes. Cox said: “The Conference is a league where players have fallen into retirement and remembers its playing days when it was spent mainly on non-league teams. Many teams only practice once a week. Now the players are young. Cat[egory] 1, Cat 2, More players drop down to these leagues from Cat 3 academies. The league would benefit from some strategy to prevent these situations from happening.”
Oxford are not the only team in the league to endure trials and tribulations. Scarborough Athletic are the farthest four days on Oxford’s list. Their location in North Yorkshire is problematic. Chairman Trevor Bull said: “The biggest problem occurs during midweek matches where our players are part-time and players are free to travel or the game disappears altogether.For some away matches, the players travel less distance than our home matches.”
South Shields are the northernmost team in the division. They are one of his few full-time clubs but feel the strain of extensive travel. Their chairman, Geoff Thompson, acknowledges the administrative struggle required to manage the branch.
“The National League South is mostly clubs in London, south London and the south west, so it’s a complex problem and we don’t know exactly how to solve it.”
Consider the situation as part of a journey through stages. “Over nine years ago we had full domestic football in the Northern League. We have a lot of promotion in our national league system and that comes at a price.”