National League club owner puts forward suggestion for deciding when new season should start

The National League has said it is “inevitable” that the 2020/2021 season will start later than August 8 and it has been reported that it might not even begin until January.

There is not appetite in the fifth tier to play matches without fans because of the financial costs.

AFC Fylde chairman, David Haythornthwaite, believes a vote would confirm this and then allow them to start planning long-term.

“I’ve always felt that if the Government advice is that we can’t have gatherings of people, then we could be waiting a long, long time for football to return to normal,” he said.

“We can’t just wait and wait. We need to go back to all the chairmen and ask: do you want to start with crowds or do you not?

“It’s a simple question and everyone is going to vote that we don’t want to start without crowds because how can we? In our league, there’s no chance of streaming games on the internet – it isn’t cost effective because there aren’t enough people who want to watch it.

“So we have zero income, zero sponsorship, zero season tickets, zero hospitality.

“All we have is costs, so we can’t possibly start (behind closed doors). So let’s have that vote.

“After having that vote we then need a date to start and I suggest that date is the first week of January.

“If we start then, we could get the league completed by June, possibly July. You then have a very short break before we start the next season.”

But Haythornthwaite admitted that starting the season in January would mean National League sides would not be able to enter the FA Cup or the FA Trophy.

He added: “That would be sad. I love the FA Cup.

“We have to sacrifice that – it makes sense to try to have a proper league season.

“That’s a suggestion but we need a date for next season because we need to know what to plan for.”