Saw Workington at the weekend, from the 8th tier of English football (Northern Premier League, Division One North West) against our local team Marske United now in the 7th tier (Northern Premier League, Premier Division) in the last pre-season friendly before the new season. (Workington won 2:1, and looked significantly stronger. We just didn’t seem up for it, but that’s not the point of this post.)
All the while I was looking at Workington I was thinking they were a Football League club until “quite recently”. In fact what I hadn’t remembered is that Workington were the team relegated (and voted out) of the league (4th tier / Division) way back in 1977, the year Wimbledon were admitted (promoted from the Southern League) – the team we then followed home and away for 8 seasons – basically until we won the FA Cup and made to the First (now Premiership) Division and things got a lot less fun.
More recently, having been working over in Cumbria for a couple of years, I drove past their ground many times. Small world.