DOWELL: TREAT US ALL EQUALLY

WORTHING owner George Dowell has urged the National League to play fair and ditch promotion and relegation – as well as play-offs – so that the whole of Non-League football is treated the same way.

- Andrew Warshaw

Dowell, one of the country’s youngest and most courageous club owners, hit out after promotion from the Isthmian League to National League South was snatched away from the Rebels by the decision to declare all seasons from Steps 3 to 7 null and void due to Covid-19.

Worthing were seven points clear at the top of the table and red-hot favorites for promotion when the season was curtailed.

Although the National League season has now also been stopped in its tracks, promotion and relegation issues are still up in the air and that doesn’t sit quite right with the Worthing chief.

Nothing, of course, will ever match the pain he suffered in a horrendous car accident a decade ago that changed his life forever and left him paralyzed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair.

But the anguish of seeing his beloved Worthing denied the chance to play in Step 2 next season has left the 27-year-old devastated after virtually saving the Sussex club from extinction a few years ago.

Ideally he would like to have carried on but now he thinks Steps 1 and 2 should do the honorable thing and fall into line with everyone else.

“I have to accept the fact that our position is not going to change even though I believe they closed leagues like ours down too early, just before furloughing was agreed,” Dowell told The NLP.