The Football Association has long harboured an ambition to build a ‘pure’ pyramid across Non-League football, the 1-2-4-8-16-16 structure from Steps 1 to 6. For anyone other than a Football Administrator, this feels like a remarkably dry topic. Indeed, many fans could be forgiven for thinking, so what?

The plans for the pure pyramid will see two new divisions established at Step 5, the level of the Western League Premier Division and a reduction of three divisions at Step 6, where the South West Peninsula League and Western League First Division sits.

Had the Coronavirus not hit, the FA would have started this season (2020/21) with their new structure, but that wasn’t possible following the decision to void last season. The FA’s plan for restructuring centre around their ability to laterally move Clubs to the most geographically appropriate division. Had the restructuring taken place, Western League Clubs would have been moved out of the League at an unprecedented rate.

With four teams set to come out of the South West Peninsula League and four teams set to be promoted from the Westerns League’s own First Division, a Premier Division that already exceeds the FA target of 20 by one, would be in desperate need of “geographically appropriate” reorganisation.

The process of lateral movement was successfully fought by Chipping Sodbury, but that fate surely awaits a host of Premier Division Clubs on the League’s eastern and northern borders. Traditional Western League heartlands in South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire could be lost as a result of the league’s expansion into the South West. Now we see why this is a subject Club administrators and fans should take seriously.

Whilst the pandemic has given sides a stay of execution in terms of their current Western League status, it also provides the FA with a valuable moment of pause. As with so many things in our lives, what was right before the pandemic isn’t necessarily right now. Covid has placed an immeasurable strain on the global economy and non league football is no different.

Whilst Hellenic Premier Division clubs will benefit from reduced travel distances, brought about by the FA’s plans to create a new Thames Valley League at Step 5, these plans will have the opposite effect in the Western League Premier Division. The introduction of Cornish teams is likely to increase travel distances for most Clubs by over a third, increasing the average travel distance from 900 miles to over 1,200.

The conundrum posed by the sprawling geography of the South West of England is something the FA have been wrestling with for some time. In their letter to Leagues in April 2019, they stated that: ’It became apparent whilst looking to provide a solution for what is a significant geographical challenge in the South West of England that a seventeenth division at Step 6 would be required’.

Not only has the 17th Division compromised the mathematical symmetry of the pure pyramid, it requires a different solution to the question of promotion and relegation.

Whilst the FA had planned for two teams to be promoted from the two divisions operated by the South West Peninsula League this season, in the seasons following the restructuring, each division will be expected to provide one Club for promotion. How realistic or even desirable this is, time will tell. Just how many Cornish Clubs want to take the step out of playing around their county, to a geography that is likely to see them travelling across Somerset, if not Wiltshire, remains to be seen.

Post Covid, Cornish and Devon Clubs could be forgiven for wanting a free pass on promotion from Step 6, but there will be a growing contingent of Clubs across the rest of the Western League that are likely to have their own concerns on the practical implications these increased travel distances will have on them. The cost of transport, be it fuel or coach hire. The prospect of mid-week re-arrangements straining player and volunteer availability.

If the current Covid hiatus provides the FA with anything, it is an opportunity to reflect on a plan that may well not be fit for purpose. Recognising the ’significant geographical challenge in the South West of England’, wouldn’t the purest solution for the pure pyramid be a pyramid of its own? A return to the traditional Step 6 set up across Devon and Cornwall, with the Western League First Division running parallel. At Step 5, a new division covering Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset, would enable the Western League Premier Division to remain largely intact.

This 2-2-2-2 configuration would dramatically improve travel distances for all concerned, as well as providing a far neater solution to promotion and relegation between the Steps.

Admittedly, Cornish sides would still experience something of a culture shock when jumping from Step 5 to the Southern League, but Clubs showing the ambition to make that leap would already recognise the necessity of putting the resources in place to compete in a League stretching to Evesham and Portsmouth.

The purity of the FA’s own pyramid would also be upheld with the winners of the Eastern and Western Step 5 Conferences playing off against each other for the right to automatic promotion, the looser given a second chance for promotion through a Step 4 play-off.

So far, football has struggled to come to terms with the pandemic. Today we are preoccupied with the answer to just one question, how to conclude the current season. Had the reorganisation gone ahead prior to this season, I have no doubt we would have been debating the unintended consequences of the pure pyramid and those challenges still lie ahead.

The FA have talked about preferring a “holistic” approach to resolving problems in the past. In these uncertain times, a holistic approach means resolving the fate of the 20/21 season, as well as ensuring that the footballing landscape of tomorrow is prepared for the legacy the Coronavirus will leave us.

Marcus Brody