It's 16 and a half years now since Wycombe were promoted into the Football League, the club in 1992-93, under the managerial reign of Martin O'Neill, winning both the GM Vauxhall Conference and the FA Trophy in a double celebration season. Looking at the league table in that campaign there are a few other clubs that are now in the Football League, those being Dagenham & Redbridge, Macclesfield Town and Yeovil Town, while coming in and then dropping out have been Boston United and Kidderminster Harriers.
Of course the first club to be promoted into the league was Scarborough when they won the Conference title in 1987. If you look at the top nine in the final table that season it doesn't look good from a long term perspective as Scarborough, Maidstone United, Enfield, Runcorn and Telford United have all gone bust and reformed as different clubs.
Of the other four Altrincham play at the same level, Barnet are in League Two, Sutton United ply their trade in the Isthmian League Premier Division and Boston United are now at the same step, in the Unibond Premier, having endured enormous financial problems in recent years. While in 18th the season Scarborough won the title were Nuneaton Borough, bust and now Nuneaton Town, and in 14th were Weymouth who have been on a life support machine for ages now.
As I look down the list of teams that have come into the Football League I do find it hard to find one that has been a real success, however you want to quantify that. Of the clubs that started off at Conference level, and not gone down and then come back up like ourselves, only Wycombe and Yeovil are currently in League One, while Accrington Stanley, Barnet, Burton, Cheltenham, Dagenham and Redbridge, Macclesfield and Morecambe are all in League Two.
Barnet are currently the only "original" to have gone up, come down and then gone up again. You could make a case for Aldershot Town I suppose but they are of course a new club after Aldershot FC went pop in March 1992, Town having gone through five promotions to "get back" into the Football League. The same argument obviously applying to Accrington Stanley as well, and even Burton Albion if you are being extremely generous.
Of the other non-league promotees over the 23 seasons, well we have already talked about Scarborough and Maidstone United, while Rushden and Diamonds and Kidderminster Harriers are both back in the Conference. Halifax Town were one club that made a hobby of yo-yoing up and down before they were another side to go bust. The Shaymen being wound up in the summer of 2008 with debts of around the £2 million mark, £814,000 of that being owed to HM Revenue and Customs.
If we look in the opposite direction the Blue Square Premier really is like an Football League old boys club at the moment. The division currently housing Oxford United, York City, Mansfield Town, Luton Town, Cambridge United, Wrexham and crisis club Chester City, as well as AFC Wimbledon, who you could consider to be the former Wimbledon depending on your point of view.
If Oxford carry on their current rich vein of form then they will be back in the Football League next season, while Mansfield and York both look like they will be in the play-offs at the end of the campaign. Chester City the only real struggler at the moment, and whether they will even exist in May could be open to question, their best case scenario from here seemingly just starting next year in the Blue Square North.
It was at that step two of the non-league pyramid that Wycombe won the Isthmian Premier Division title in 1986-87, ahead of second-placed Yeovil Town. Wanderers enjoying four relatively uneventful seasons in the GM Vauxhall Conference before they finished second in the league on goal difference to Colchester United, both sides ending the campaign on a mammoth 94 points.
Next season of course they coasted to the title, winning it by 15 points ahead of, of all clubs, Bromsgrove Rovers. And so we come full circle to Brunton Park as their inaugural Football League fixture was a 2-2 draw here in mid-August 1993 in front of a healthy opening day crowd of 7,752. United's Chris Curran scoring for both sides, while the other goals were notched up by Rod Thomas for Carlisle and Steve Guppy for Wanderers.
For me though, standing in the Scratching Pen, the main memory of the game was an audible gasp from the United faithful as summer signing Curran was horrendously outpaced at one point by a Wycombe forward. Times change though and let's hope we see none of that from the Carlisle defence today as hopefully another three points can be chalked up on the board.
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