On a cold Tuesday night, as the wind whipped in from the North Sea, I joined 220 hardy souls to watch a game of football. Less than a mile away from the Sizewell nuclear plant on the Suffolk coast but light years away from the lurid lights of the Premiership, Leiston FC were playing Ilkeston Town in the Pitching In Southern League – Premier Division Central. As the old joke goes, the attendance was so small it would have been easier to name the crowd changes than the team changes.
Welcome to non-league football – in this case the seventh tier of the game’s pyramid system of promotion and relegation. A win for Leiston on this night would see them go second in the division – the highest position they have been since the formation of the club in 1880, according to one local who looked old enough to have seen them when they started.
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