Hello one & all,

Firstly, many thanks to all of you that have bought "The Terror", the Tooting matchday programme this season, your custom is much appreciated and the revenue helps in no small way towards the football budget
...........and  to those of you who won't buy a programme, you don't know what you're missing.
I'm told by its readers that it's a damned good read, and contrary to popular rumours, it is NOT full of adverts and no copy !  ............  and you're missing your chance to help the club out with vital funding, so break the habit of a lifetime and don't blank me when you walk through the gate and buy a copy to try it out - you'll spend far more in the bar !

Anyway, moving on, I thought you might like to read this week's NLP programme feed column, as you won't see it in any Tooting programmes now 'til next season. See you at the gate next season, enjoy :--

This week’s Non-League Paper programme copy below, written by Tom Dodd.
It’s that time of year again. The time when, for some, summers are made. For others? The orders to get a holiday booked up ASAP are made to try and relieve the pain.
Barely had the dust settled following the final whistle in last weekend’s Step 3 fixtures, and twelve teams were already planning their extended season. All of them were just two more wins (extra-time and penalties notwithstanding) from promotion. Six were lost in the week and a further three will come up short over the weekend. All nine will have to pick themselves up and get ready to do it all over next season, whilst watching one team from their division celebrate escalation to Step 2.
Welcome to the agony and ecstasy of the play-offs.  
First of all, let’s congratulate Poole Town, Hampton & Richmond Borough and Darlington ’83 for sparing their fans’ heartrate any more drama and securing an automatic path to the National Leagues in the regular season.
Having watched Poole and Hampton in their decisive games over the past two weeks they both looked worthy champions. Robust, difficult to break down and a real threat going forward- everything you need to mount a title challenge in any tier of English football. As for Darlington, any team which scores 105 points in a season deserves a chance to play in a higher division the following year.
The play-off zones paint a different picture ahead of this week’s clashes too. The Northern Premier was already decided going into last weekend, and Blyth found themselves in a league of their own in second place, leaving Salford, Ashford and Workington to scrap over third place in the final weeks of the campaign. The gap between second and fifth was thirteen points.
It was a similar story in the Ryman Premier, but Bognor will know how close they came to escaping the play-offs and displacing Hampton at the division’s summit. They were joined by East Thurrock, Tonbridge and Dulwich, who survived a mishap in their final fixture to pip Enfield to the final spot.
Poole sealed their Southern Premier League triumph with two games to spare, and left those behind them to fight for second in the tightest of the three Step 3 leagues. Just one win separated Redditch, Hitchin, Hungerford and Leamington after 46 games, making picking a winner at the end of this weekend nigh on impossible.
The race to get into Step 3 is just as fierce, with 24 teams facing off hoping to join Warrington, Stafford Rangers, AFC Sudbury, Folkstone Invicta, Kings Langley and Cinderford Town, who in achieved promotion thanks in part to an undefeated home record for the season. Warrington found the back of the net 121 times last year, while Folkstone’s 114 points from 46 games further demonstrates the heights that must be attained to get out of these divisions.
AFC Sudbury also reached a century of points, while Kings Langley and Stafford held off the chasing pack. Various ways of achieving the ultimate goal, but all worthy champions.
The onus has now fallen on those teams remaining in all the Northern, Ryman and Southern leagues to prove themselves in a simple knockout format. Form goes out the window, league position becomes irrelevant, and no side wants to look back and think of what might have been.
46 games and nearly ten months of football. It all comes down to this.