With John Evans, I was instrumental in the formation of the Alliance Premier League, which went on to become the Football Conference and now the National League. With the subsequent introduction of automatic promotion, the National League is now firmly established as English football’s “fifth division”.
In 2022-23, Luton Town clinched promotion to the Premier League, to become the first team to have risen from non-league to the top tier of English football. At the same time, former Premier League club Oldham Athletic were playing in the National League.
Such mobility was impossible before the Alliance was conceived. I designed the trophy – a gold pyramid with a ball and player on top – paid for it and and donated it to the League. I was proud to see it feature prominently in the first League Handbook with the following description:
The Noel Kelly League Championship Trophy
With a 14” square base and standing 22” high this trophy embodies in its design and solid silver and silver gilt content the status and position of the Alliance Premier Football League at the head of the Pyramid of semi-professional football. The trophy is valued at £6,000 and was the gift of Mr Noel Kelly, Life Member of the League and Chairman of Nuneaton Borough FC”
The Noel Kelly Trophy was awarded to Altrincham in 1980, and to every league winner until 2016, when it was replaced by one donated by the league’s sponsors.
But because I continued to insist on justice for the club after it was illegally relegated, they removed my life membership, and took my name off the trophy. They even claimed I only paid a quarter of the cost of the trophy, when I had evidence of payment for its entire design and making.
My trophy now sits proudly in the National Football Museum in Manchester.