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Football League Third Division North
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Third Division North of The Football League was a level in English association football, which ran parallel to Third Division South from 1921 to 1958.
The Third Division South had been formed the previous season (as simply the Third Division) with 22 teams mostly from the Southern League. It was decided that this gave the league too much of a southern bias, so the Third Division North was created to redress the balance. However, there was not a northern equivalent of the Southern League, so only 20 teams could be found, taken from several regional leagues: the Midland League, the Central League, the North Eastern League, the Lancashire Combination and the Birmingham Combination. A further two teams were added in 1923 to take the total to 22.
Only one promotion place was available each season from Third Division North to the Second Division, which made it very difficult to win promotion. Eight teams were ever-present in the division for the thirty years of its existence. Of the teams present in Third Division North, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Derby County made it all the way to the Championship.
In 1958 the two regional Third Divisions were merged together, to create the new Third Division and Fourth Division.
From 1934 to the war's outbreak there was a short-lived knockout Football League Third Division North Cup.