National Conference League
In 1993 the RFL wanted to contract the professional ranks from 35 to 32 teams. However, their initial plan to place the excluded teams in the Alliance (reserve grade) faced a legal challenge so they needed an alternative competition to place them in. The RFL thus proposed a league to bridge the gap between the professional and amateur leagues to feature the three demoted semi-pro clubs plus Hemel Hempstead (who already played in the Alliance as a semi-pro club) and eight BARLA clubs.
However, BARLA wanted all National League clubs to be in any such league and since the RFL were in a tough legal position they were prepared to compromise with BARLA and thus the three division National Conference League was born. Other concessions made were an increase in the BARLA representation in the Challenge Cup from a mere 2 clubs to 64 and allowing the National Conference League champions to apply to replace the bottom team in the pro leagues.
However, the latter concession soon disappeared as the pro leagues moved to summer and the National Conference League did not want to move, furthermore Woolston Rovers' application to replace Highfield was voted out (the one club elected to the league from the National Conference League being Chorley Borough who were themselves a former semi-pro league club). The National Conference League soon expanded all divisions to 14 teams, though on occasions it has struggled to reach full complement of members, and lost all the remaining semi-pro clubs within three seasons.
Due to the switch of the pro game to summer the National Conference League gradually came to be seen as solely a BARLA league, despite being temporarily expelled from BARLA in 2002, with only three National Conference League teams joining National League Three which was intended as a league to bridge the gap between the pro and amateur games. However, this was to change in 2008 when the National Conference League decided they did not like the path BARLA was taking and downgraded the league's BARLA membership from full to associate. In 2009 the National Conference League introduced a summer competition for clubs wanting to play year round as a test for a more permanent switch to summer which was to come in 2012.
Read more about this topic: History Of The National Conference League
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