Non-League Day is an initiative to encourage football fans to attend local amateur and semi-professional matches in a bid to support grassroots football.
Founded by James Doe in 2010, and actually a whole weekend rather than a day, NLD has gained popularity with MPs, celebrities and notable ex-pros for its great work in boosting grassroots football
This year the legendary Matt Le Tissier will be supporting the initiative as well as working with Prostate Cancer UK – Non-League Day’s official charity, which will receive 10p for every fan that attends a Conference game – there’s no need to worry about your regular club commitments because the NLD is always thoughtfully placed within the international break!
It is no wonder that Non-League Day is becoming more successful year on year, with the last two bringing over 75,000 fans through the turnstiles of grassroots clubs – a figure which isn’t enough for the ambitious organisers who are now hoping for 50,000 attendees for this year alone.
The other benefits of attending Non-league games are pretty self-evident and are often a welcome change to many fans that have only ever been to Premier or Football League games.
The atmosphere is open and friendly, costs are a fraction of what they are at professional clubs and you can get much closer to the action, with standing areas being one the great novelties.
And not only this, there’s always the chance you may see a future star in the making, (after all what else does grassroots mean?) In other words you might be grabbing yourself the bargain of a lifetime.
Last year we ran a competition in association with non league day which received over 1,000 votes, there were some great entries that you can view here.
The competition involved taking the best picture which captures the nature of grassroots football- the picture below was one of our favourite entries from
@sambrown387 which we titled “Sunday league injury compassion”.
Make sure you get down to your local club and offer your support this Saturday for non league day.
