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The National North League fixtures are released next Friday but how are they compiled?
National League's Tom Scott explains:
The new campaign kicks off on Saturday 8 August and the excitement is building.
Around a month before, the full fixture schedules for the 72 clubs will be announced on Friday 10 July at 11am.
Producing the fixture list is a lengthy and meticulous process that is months in the making, with 1,656 games plotted.
Here we dispel some common myths around why National League supporters have to wait longer than Premier League and EFL clubs for their fixtures.
Here's how the National League fixture list is compiled…
How long does the fixture compilation process take?
The groundwork for the following season's fixtures actually begins before the current campaign has even finished. The starting point is the fixture schedule which is essentially a master calendar that maps out matchdays across all three divisions, incorporating key dates from the Premier League, EFL, FA Cup, FA Trophy, National League Cup and international calendar.
Once the season concludes and each division's makeup is confirmed, clubs receive a fixture questionnaire from the National League. This covers everything from preferred home and away patterns to their longest and shortest travel distances, Christmas and Easter scheduling preferences, and any clubs they'd like to be programmed opposite to.
All of that information is then passed to Atos - an international IT company that also works with, among many others, the Premier League and EFL who run it through specialist fixture-compiling software. The League subsequently meets with Atos, the Football Supporters' Association and the police to work through any conflicts in the initial output and sign off the final schedule.
Why are National League fixtures released later than those in the Premier League and EFL?
Because Atos serves all three competitions, there's a natural order to how things are done - Premier League first, EFL second, National League third. Each tier's fixtures can only be finalised once the one above it is locked in, given the number of overlapping considerations such as shared policing and stewarding arrangements, and the need to avoid travel clashes between rival sets of supporters.
Each season we also receive fixture questionnaires from all clubs, containing hundreds of individual requests and constraints that must be considered alongside operational requirements.
This season alone, 25 clubs submitted detailed additional comments requiring individual consideration including ground works, concerts, events and club bookings while more than 30 clubs identified specific local fixtures, rivalries or geographical considerations that needed to be factored into the schedule. Together this makes hundreds of requests from clubs that also need consideration.
Many requests directly conflict with those of other clubs – including clubs from the Premier League and EFL - which as a result means producing the fixture list is a highly detailed process that involves reviewing and accommodating hundreds of variables before a final schedule can be published.