WE'VE PUT BIG BLOW TO BED

ONE of my main ambitions, since I joined Biggleswade United back in 2014, has been to see us field a first-team in both our men’s and women’s sides made up entirely of homegrown players who have progressed into our topsides through the junior sections of the club.

- Guillem BALAGUE

And now – certainly as far as the men’s team is concerned – we’re there, although hardly in the way anyone at the club would have wanted or expected.

Let’s not mince our words. The arbitrary decision by the FA forcing our men’s first team to leave the Premier Division of the Spartan South Midlands League and play next season in the Uhlsport United Counties League has decimated our squad with all but one of our first team players – take a bow, George Harlow – having left because of the 20 per cent extra travel commitments required to play in the UCL.

Most of our first-team squad was made up of players that lived south of the Biggleswade area and many worked in the Hertfordshire and London area. Having to commit to playing in a more northerly-based league was never going to be an option for them.

We appealed the ruling and felt a glimmer of hope when those deciding our fate nodded sympathetically as we explained that the extra travel commitments generated by the move would lead to us hemorrhaging players and cost us sponsors and revenue.

The FA certainly seemed to understand our predicament but in the end what we were to them was no more or less than an exercise in expediency, collateral damage sustained as they attempted to make some kind of sense of the latest geographical conundrum they found themselves facing.