The Spartan South Midlands Football League is an English football league covering Hertfordshire, northwestern Greater London, central Buckinghamshire and southern Bedfordshire. It is a feeder to the Southern Football League or the Isthmian League, and consists of five divisions – three for first teams (Premier Division, Division One and Division Two), and two for reserve teams (Reserve Division One and Reserve Division Two).
The league was formed in 1997 by the merger of the London Spartan League and the South Midlands League. It is also known as the Molten Spartan South Midlands Football League after its sponsors.
The Premier Division is at step 5 (or level 9) of the National League System, divisions One and Two at step 6/level 10 and step 7/level 11 of the National League System respectively. The reserve divisions are not part of the National League system.
Famous quotes containing the words spartan, south, midlands, football and/or league:
“But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their servant though all are underground.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Even when seen from near, the olive shows
A hue of far away. Perhaps for this
The dove brought olive back, a tree which grows
Unearthly pale, which ever dims and dries,
And whose great thirst, exceeding all excess,
Teaches the South it is not paradise.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands ... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“We’re the victims of a disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the law and order league are scouring out the dregs of the town. C’mon be a glorified wreck like me.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)