Moneyfields chairman: Let’s scrap the 2020/21 Southern League season and start again next September

Due to the current pausing of the step 4 campaign, the Portsmouth-based club have not played a league game since October 10.

Indeed, they have only managed to fit in FOUR of their scheduled 38 Division 1 South games so far in a season which began 14 weeks ago.

And with the season due to be completed in early May, Seiden cannot see anything other than a second successive non-league campaign scrapped.

Moneyfields have played fewest games of any of the 224 clubs across the three leagues at step 3 and step 4 - the Southern League, the Isthmian League and the Northern Premier League.

Bury Town and Cambridge City of the Isthmian League North have also played four of their scheduled 38 games.

Despite that, they still voted against the proposal to continue suspending the season when the second national lockdown was lifted at the start of this month.

But now Seiden is having a change of heart, and believes only reimbursing clubs for lost sales in bar takings would see the season completed.

‘Unless they’re prepared to subsidise the bars, I can’t see it restarting,’ he said.

‘Clubs won’t vote to restart if they can’t have their bars open.

‘I don’t care what the decision is, they just need to make one. People will moan - everyone will have their own interests - but we just need a decision.

‘Doing nothing creates the uncertainty. Doing nothing is what costs money for clubs at our level.’

The Southern League last week said the season would be ‘unlikely’ to restart before Saturday, January 9.

Clubs would be given ‘at least’ 10 days notice before games restarted.

If the league did resume on January 9, clubs would therefore need to be informed by the end of this month. And with Portsmouth, Havant and Gosport just some of the places in the newly-formed tier 4, it’s doubtful whether the league will flash the green light for ‘go anytime soon’.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say Moneys DID resume their league campaign on January 9.

At present, according to the Southern League website, the club’s last scheduled league game is at Melksham on Saturday, May 8.

Starting on January 9, that would mean Moneyfields shoehorning 34 league games into a 120-day period - or a game every three and a half days.

Compare that to the four league games in 112 days they would have played between September 19 - when the Southern League campaign finally began, six weeks later than usual - and January 8!

‘Getting sponsors at the moment is very difficult, or it is for us,’ Seiden continued.

‘Sponsors quite rightly don’t want to pay for a board at the ground because there’s no-one there to see it.

‘If the season was binned and we were told to start afresh in September, I could go to sponsors saying ‘right, we’ll be playing then - how about a board?’

‘The biggest problem is not knowing.

‘The easiest thing to do is bin this season and start again in September. At least you will know where you stand.

‘That to me is the sensible thing to do, but FA don’t seem to do sensible things.

‘If we come back for a month and we have to pay players four weeks’ money, and then they cancel the season … that’s four weeks’ money we could have put towards next season.

‘Money is always tight at our level.’

Across the three Trident Leagues at steps 3 and 4 level - the Southern League, the Isthmian League and the Northern Premier League - 224 clubs voted on whether to resume league games after the second national lockdown.

Of those, 172 (an overwhelming 76 per cent) agreed to carry on pausing the season with only 51 - including Moneyfields and Gosport Borough - voting to carry on. One club abstained.

‘I don’t think we’ll be able to finish,’ Seiden rued.

‘We’ve only played four league games.

‘Even if we restart in January, we’ll probably only play a couple of games.

‘That means we’ve got to play virtually an entire season in February, March and April.

‘We’d be playing Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

‘You couldn’t put players through that - they’ve got to work as well.

‘You wouldn’t have a side left if we had to do that.

‘We’d have to say we wouldn’t play the games.

‘You could extend into May and June, but that’s usually when clubs have the work done on their pitches.’

The chairman continued: ‘This is the first time I’ve felt like this.

‘We voted to carry on but if we had another vote we’d vote to stop it

‘Clubs didn’t vote against restarting because of the virus, they voted for financial reasons - because they weren’t being allowed to open their bars

‘Until they’re allowed to open them, they’re not going to vote to restart.

‘When we had the vote it wasn’t a close result.’

Should the season be binned, the obvious question is this: how will it affect promotion and relegation elsewhere in the pyramid?

‘At the Zoom meeting (where the vote was taken) the league said they definitely wanted promotion and relegation this season,’ said Seiden.

‘Points-per-game has been mentioned, but you need everyone to have played roughly the same amount of matches - we’ve only played four.

‘We’d be punished because we had a couple of cup runs that’s put us behind.

‘If the Wessex and Hampshire Leagues continue, they should allow teams to win promotion if they want it.

‘In the Southern League, if we end up with a few more teams next season then that’s no hardship.

You’d just have more teams relegated at the end of it.’

Last season the FA controversially cancelled all non-league football between steps 3 and 6, despite clubs having played around two-thirds (or more) of their fixtures.

That in turn had a knock on effect at step 7 where the Hampshire Premier League were unable to promote any teams as none were coming down from the Wessex League Division 1 (step 6).

This season the FA could have the same decision to make again, but this time with clubs having played far fewer games.