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Alfreton Town
Say what you want about Alfreton, and believe me I have, but on crowds of 500 if they’re lucky, they comfortably qualified for the play-offs again last season.
6’ 4” Dutch midfielder Jed Abbey has been signed from South Shields, and certainly fits the club mould physically. Fellow midfielder Ahmed Salam rejoins the club after a season in ‘the Gibraltar top flight’, which suggests that there’s room for more than one flight in Gibraltar, a possibility I find spatially unlikely if nothing else.
Goalkeeper
George Willis, timewaster par excellence over the last few seasons,
seemed a little less cynical at Edgar Street last time. One can but hope that
he’s realised that going to grotesque lengths to increase the likelihood of
drawing a tier 6 football match 0-0 isn’t worth losing any last remaining
self-respect or dignity you possess in front of 3000 people.
Ex-Bull and different-club-every-season merchant Ken Digie has moved up a division with Tamworth. Also departed is Matt Rhead, for several seasons something of a club talisman.
Manager Billy
Heath embarks on his seventh season of giving post-match interviews describing
something very different to what everyone else saw.
Like Kings Lynn, something of a bogey team for Hereford.
Brackley Town
Play-off losers again last season for the umpteenth time. It just doesn’t feel like destiny is on their side. In fact it feels like destiny has nicked their dinner money and given them a Chinese burn.
Manager Gavin Cowan signed an extended contract in the middle of last season, and has looked to be a good fit at the club, but he’ll have to find a way to either ensure they finish top to avoid the play-offs, or employ a hoodoo fixer as his number two in order to progress should they finish somewhere between second and seventh. I’m not entirely sure what a hoodoo fixer is, but they need one.
Ex-Bull Tommy O’Sullivan will pull the strings for them again this season in the poundshop Platini role.
Old boys Matt Lowe and Shane Byrne return to the club from Accrington and Kiddy respectively, which could be seen as a backward step or that their familiarity with the club will be an advantage in terms of hitting the ground running.
Brackley have now properly signed striker Connor Hall from Solihull, and in his time at this level with Chorley and then Brackley (on loan last season) he’s proved that he’s good for a goal every other game. Big signing.
Like Kings Lynn and Alfreton, something of a bogey team for Hereford.
Buxton
New manager, new team, as the Bucks go full-time for the first time this season on crowds of about 500 which is, financially speaking, and indeed any other kind of speaking, absolutely nuts.
Manager Craig Elliott left at the end of the season and John McGrath takes over. The former really knew his onions at this level while the latter comes in from a lower level, so that could affect them a bit.
Midfielder Connor Kirby has survived the overhaul and should be a key player for them again.
Too many new signings to mention here, but one is Josh Popoola, who has performed well in the National League North before when briefly on loan at Spennymoor and Chorley.
Chester
Defensively superb last time, but from a rock-solid league position a couple of months before the end of the season this fan-owned club faded and missed out on the play-offs, seriously missing the goals of the departed Kurt Willoughby. The striker is now back at the club on a season-long loan from Oldham, and that looks like a smashing bit of business, with Dan Turner brought in from Brackley to partner him. Coincidentally Holly Willoughby’s son is called Chester. Small world.
Disappointingly they employed all sorts of timewasting tactics last season at Edgar Street which eventually even bored the ref, who handed the Bulls a penalty as punishment for them being continually irksome, which was nice and refreshing. The seemingly interminable wait for the ball to trickle over the line from Andy Williams’ spot kick wasn’t quite so nice and refreshing, but trickle it did and justice was served. It would be nice if they reverted to prioritising football over acting this season though.
In explaining the need to reduce the size of his squad this season, manager Calum McIntyre has said: “"We have what we have to spend and we can only operate within that budget. We can’t spend what others in the division can but we can offer the opportunity to play at a massive football club in front of some of the best supporters around. That is what sets us apart." Word-for-word this could have come from the mouth of Paul Caddis.
He also said: "Without sounding daft, the nature of needing to make some changes means that you have to make changes to allow you to do just that” which sounds, er, daft.
1600ish season tickets sold and a £100k squadbuilder target met for the second season running at the Deva – super effort at this level. Presumably contenders once again, although the smaller squad won’t help their cause.
Former Hereford defender Mitch Hancox joins from Altrincham. Central defender Connell Rawlinson joins from Notts County.
Chorley
Usually tough and competitive at this level, and briefly threatened to finish as runners-up last season before ending up fourth.
Evesham-born Andy Preece is a canny operator, and has been busy over the summer fine-tuning his squad. Mo Touray has been signed as a striker, a player who had a loan spell at Hereford, scoring one goal in 18 appearances. He’s done better lately with Warrington Rylands, but that was at a level lower. They’ve lost influential wide man Justin Johnson however, as he’s been seduced by the bright lights of Macclesfield.
New signings Cole Hall, Jack Rice and Tom Carr suggests a policy of only fielding players with short names in a bid to lower the cost to fans in having to add fewer letters to the back of their replica shirts. This theory is supported by the fact that Carlton Ubaezuonu has moved to Scunthorpe.
If the Bulls finish above Chorley you’d imagine they’ll be in the play-offs.
Curzon Ashton
One of the smaller clubs in the division, but they punched above their weight last season in qualifying for the play-offs, building on the progress they made the season before that. The Nash seem to have now established themselves as a solid NLN contender club rather than the minnow narrowly avoiding relegation each season that they used to be.