The National League checkpoint: the July calls meet the table

Matt Rush’s stoppage-time winner against Hartlepool gave Boreham Wood their fourteenth victory in sixteen league games. On the same afternoon, Southend lost at Wealdstone after leading twice. The gap between the clubs reached 15 points.

Only three of my predicted top seven occupy those places at this checkpoint, with another three in the bottom half, and just one of my four relegation picks is in the bottom four. Boreham Wood, Barrow and Gateshead are the only exact matches, with an average miss across the table of six places.

The table against July

The league table is after 31 October; July shows the original predicted finishing position. The subsequent FA Cup results discussed below are separate.

Now	Club	Played	Points	July
1	Boreham Wood	16	44	1
2	Harrogate Town	16	32	8
3	Southend United	16	29	4
4	AFC Fylde	16	29	15
5	Yeovil Town	16	28	12
6	Worthing	16	28	7
7	Altrincham	16	28	19
8	Carlisle United	16	26	3
9	Barrow	15	25	9
10	FC Halifax Town	16	24	13
11	Sutton United	16	24	20
12	Woking	16	21	11
13	Kidderminster Harriers	16	21	18
14	Aldershot Town	16	21	22
15	Hornchurch	16	21	14
16	Forest Green Rovers	14	19	5
17	Eastleigh	16	19	23
18	Wealdstone	16	18	21
19	Boston United	16	18	16
20	Tamworth	15	17	10
21	Hartlepool United	16	15	6
22	Solihull Moors	16	13	17
23	Scunthorpe United	15	10	2
24	Gateshead	15	4	24

The gap from third to seventh is one point. Carlisle are only three behind Southend, while Barrow have a game in hand.

The leaders and the current top seven

Boreham Wood. Luke Garrard’s side has won seven of the eight league matches in which it has trailed, including all three in which it was behind at half-time. The Hartlepool winner came after Wood had allowed a two-goal lead to become a 3-2 deficit.

I backed a manager whose relationships with the team were already working. The side which lost May’s promotion final to Rochdale on penalties was kept largely together, then strengthened. Ben Whitfield’s September loan from Barrow supplied five goals in his first four Wood appearances. Garrard has been able to add that threat to a group already used to winning at this level.

Harrogate Town. Simon Weaver has won ten league games, six at home, making my eighth-place call look too cautious. Carlisle’s 3-0 win despite finishing with nine men and Fylde’s subsequent 4-1 cup victory at Harrogate show where the recovery has been vulnerable. Between those defeats, Harrogate came from two down at Forest Green to draw.

Southend United. Parts one and two examine the football and squad rebuild behind third place.

AFC Fylde. Craig Mahon’s side has won nine league games, five away from home. Defeat at Roots Hall did not stop them moving level on points with Southend, and they have since won 4-1 at Harrogate in the FA Cup. They have already made promotion from the North look like preparation for this level rather than a reason to settle for survival.

In July I wrote about a hundred-point title-winning side and still put it fifteenth. I allowed uncertainty about squad changes to outweigh the evidence of Mahon’s work. Worthing received much more credit for arriving with an established method; Fylde’s results show how cautiously I treated a comparable strength.

Yeovil Town. Billy Rowley’s rebuilt side has scored 35 league goals, with Johl Powell carrying his threat up from Walton & Hersham. The consecutive six-goal wins over Boston and Wealdstone put Yeovil well beyond my expected mid-table return, although Wealdstone’s goalkeeper was dismissed before the scoring began. Halifax later beat them.

Worthing. Adam Hinshelwood’s half-time changes against Southend showed why I was prepared to put a Step One newcomer seventh. Cory Adjetey-Brew’s runs have supplied winners against Solihull and Kidderminster as well as a goal against Southend. Their unbeaten league run ended with Sutton’s 3-0 win at Woodside Road.

Altrincham. Three opening defeats gave Neil Gibson an immediate problem, and September brought five wins from six and the manager-of-the-month award. His side has now won nine league matches, one more than Southend despite scoring fourteen fewer goals. That return has carried Altrincham into the play-off places after the start gave little encouragement.

I read the decline from fourth to ninth to thirteenth as the strongest guide to their prospects and put them nineteenth. Gibson has changed the results far more quickly than that assessment allowed. Their goal difference is level, and Carlisle beat them 4-2 at the end of October.

The pressure from below

Carlisle United. Rob Elliot’s side rose from sixteenth to eighth during an unbeaten October which included league wins over Harrogate and Altrincham. That defensive improvement has brought Carlisle back towards the promotion challenge I expected, although the poor start still leaves them below my third-place call. They followed it with an FA Cup win over Salford.

Barrow. Ninth matches July’s call, which is about the least useful thing that can be said about their season. Adam Murray’s side has a game in hand and has won at Gillingham in the FA Cup since Eastleigh’s equaliser in the eleventh minute of added time ended their six-match winning run.

FC Halifax Town. Five home wins and two away explain much of John McGrath’s uneven return. Halifax followed the late point at Roots Hall and defeat by Barrow with a 2-0 win over Yeovil. They took control after half-time at The Shay, scoring twice in eight minutes.

Sutton United. Twenty goals against 21 conceded have earned Sutton 24 points, five fewer than Southend have taken from 38 goals. I had them twentieth. Temi Babalola scored twice in the 3-0 win at Worthing.

Woking. My assessment of Jermain Defoe’s first full season lasted three days: he left on 23 July. Craig Ross and Jake Hyde took on the interim work, with Hyde departing for personal reasons on 1 November. Woking have won four times away from home, twice as often as at their own ground.

A crowded lower half

Kidderminster Harriers. An early eight-game unbeaten run has given way to eight league games without a win under Paul Wotton. Harriers have conceded the division’s fewest goals, 16, but scored only 17, which is the gap Sam Austin’s loan from Southend is meant to address. They have also just beaten Doncaster in the FA Cup.

Aldershot Town. Four home wins have helped Scott Davies keep the Shots six points above the bottom four, a better start than my relegation prediction allowed for. Beating Gateshead ended a losing run before the trip to Southend.

Hornchurch. Five home wins and only four goals conceded there contrast with seven defeats and 22 conceded in nine away games. Harry Taylor’s arrival from Southend gives Daryl McMahon another experienced option to address that imbalance.

Forest Green Rovers. Robbie Savage has left Forest Green, where an interim coaching team remains in charge. My fifth-place forecast is eleven places away from the current table: this belongs alongside Hartlepool and Scunthorpe among July’s major failures. They have two games in hand, but even six points would leave them below the current seventh-place total. Yan Klukowski and his fellow coaches have recently beaten Eastleigh and led Harrogate 2-0 before drawing.

Eastleigh. Aaron Blair’s goals and a home record worth 15 of their 19 points have kept Matt Gray’s side above my relegation call. Their late equaliser at Barrow followed the recovery against Southend. Away from home they have won once, and they remain four points above the bottom four.

Wealdstone. Gary Waddock prepared his side to play through Luke Norris and send runners beyond him, exposing the danger the Talking Shrimpers preview had identified. That work helped produce the 3-2 win. Their season also contains the six-goal defeat by Yeovil and an FA Cup exit at Dover.

Boston United. Paul Hurst’s side has conceded 29 league goals, including six at Yeovil. Southend still needed a stoppage-time winner at Boston, before Tom Cursons’s two goals against Scunthorpe supplied an important win for the Pilgrims.

Tamworth. I put Tamworth tenth because Andy Peaks had delivered successive top-half finishes and I expected that competitiveness to survive the summer changes. Kieren Donnelly has helped keep the attack productive, but the away record has dragged them down: five defeats in seven, with 21 conceded. They are twentieth with a game in hand.

The bottom four

Hartlepool United. Pete Wild replaced Lee Clark on 1 October. The side I picked sixth had required a managerial reset before two months of league football had passed. I had treated improving finishes and ambitious recruitment as evidence that Hartlepool were ready for the play-offs. They have lost eleven of sixteen matches.

Pools have only eighteen league goals from sixteen matches, so there is work in creating and finishing chances as well as defending. Wild has overseen a win at Forest Green. Their three-goal display at Boreham Wood still ended in a 4-3 defeat.

Solihull Moors. Forty conceded is the division’s worst defensive total. Successive wins over Wealdstone and Kidderminster were their first back-to-back league victories this season and have brought the clubs above the line within reach. The response is welcome after a start worse than my seventeenth-place prediction anticipated.

Scunthorpe United. Andy Butler left after six defeats in seven league games, and the loss at Boston left the Iron with ten points from fifteen. Jacob Butterfield remains interim manager. This was the side I put second and selected to win promotion through the play-offs, now twenty-one places below that call.

I trusted Butler’s progress with an established side which had finished fifth, reinforced by summer recruitment. Instead of taking another step towards promotion, Scunthorpe are trying to repair a season in the bottom four. Southend’s only league clean sheet came against my second-place pick.

Gateshead. There is little satisfaction in having Gateshead where I predicted. Four points and nine goals from fifteen league matches describe the scale of the football problem, but the club’s most consequential recent news concerned its future off the pitch.

In its 6 November statement, Gateshead announced a Flacks Group takeover subject to regulatory approval. Interim chairman Graham Wood said: “Staff and players have now been paid”, adding that funds were in place for HMRC and other creditors. The people working to keep Gateshead going need that recovery to last while the team tries to recover the points.

What the comparison changes for Southend

Fylde and Altrincham have forced the biggest upward corrections through the work of managers I treated too cautiously. Forest Green, Hartlepool and Scunthorpe have overturned my assumptions about the promotion group. The different paths matter: Carlisle and Barrow are recovering quickly, while Kidderminster’s early progress has slowed.

Four points cover third to ninth, with Barrow holding a game in hand. Southend have earned a place near the front of that chase, but the clubs around them are already moving at different speeds.

Third remains a positive return, with attacking football good enough to justify July’s expectation of a promotion challenge. Keeping the place will take the collective reliability that is carrying several less celebrated squads much further than I expected.

Part three of a three-part season review.