Hucknall Town announce resignation from Northern Counties East League

By James Grayson (Twitter: @jamesAgrayson)

Hucknall Town have announced that they are to leave the Northern Counties East League and join the Central Midlands League, despite being accepted as a member at the June AGM.

Hucknall have encountered severe problems over the last 12 months and even suffered a 13-0 defeat with only eight players during their doomed Evo Stik Division One South campaign.

But while the situation is very sad, the NCEL need to be very strong with their response. You can’t suddenly decide that you want to change leagues with only a month to go before the start of the season after being is accepted at the AGM.

Everything is sorted for every league up and down the country. Hucknall should have put their hand up a month ago to say they were struggling. We will now have 23 teams in the Premier Division which means that one team will down tools every Saturday. And then every team will lose one’s week worth of income.

While hoping that Hucknall can save themselves in the Central Midlands League, there needs to be serious sanctions - a large fine and FA Cup ban is sufficient because such an occurrence should never happen again.

It is also hard to understand why the situation wasn’t resolved earlier by the NCEL and allowed to drag on into July. There should have been a firm deadline. Surely not paying the players and insisting on the players driving themselves to games could have solved travelling costs problems. Who at Hucknall would care if they didn’t win a game all season, but the club was saved at the same time.

The NCEL have to answer the question: Since Shaw Lane Aquaforce were put through the wringer and rejected at the AGM, why were Hucknall were accepted?

Were they put under scrutiny and or just waved through with a quick show of hands. They have big problems, any club who start a game with eight players and lose 13-0 are quite clearly running like a rudderless ship.

I hope Hucknall survive and are still around in 100 years, but how they are leaving the NCEL is wrong and unacceptable and the league committee and the FA have to be strong with them.