Conference League Cup

For the Irish football competition, see Setanta Sports Cup.

Conference League Cup

Founded	1979
Region	England
Number of teams	68 (2008–09)
Current champions	A.F.C. Telford United (2008-2009)
Most successful club	Bromsgrove Rovers, Doncaster Rovers, Northwich Victoria & Runcorn (2 wins each)

The Conference League Cup (formerly known as the Setanta Shield for sponsorship reasons, and before that the Bob Lord Trophy) was an English football competition open to clubs playing in levels 5 or 6 of the English football league system (steps 1 and 2 of the National League System), which covers the three Football Conference divisions.

The Conference League Cup was formed for the inaugural season of the Football Conference, in 1979-80 and existed for twenty-two seasons before being axed at the end of the 2000-01 season. It was briefly reformed for the 2004-05 season, in the form of the Conference Challenge Cup, but following a poor response it was again agreed not to renew the competition for the next season. With the transfer of sponsorship of the Conference to Blue Square for the start of the 2007-08 season two seasons later, the re-introduction of the competition was announced, scheduled to commence that very year.^[1] On 23 June 2009 the Conference League Cup's sponsor, Setanta's GB division went into administration and ceased broadcasting. Without a sponsor, the tournament was put on an indefinite hiatus from the 2009-10 season.

Format

The competition was a knockout tournament with pairings drawn at random - like the FA Cup there is a minimal form of seeding, in that members of the (higher-level) Conference National enter together at a later stage in the tournament, and the draw for each round takes place after the completion of the round before. Assuming the Conference is neither expanded nor diminished in future, there will thus be an annual entry of 68 teams into the tournament. The first three rounds are contested solely between teams from the Conference's North and South divisions, however, until only 8 teams total from the two Divisions remain, at which point the teams of the Conference National will be entered. Matches which produce no winner after 90 minutes continue into extra time and then progress to a penalty shoot-out akin to the style of the Football League Cup, rather than scheduling replays as in the FA Cup, however the 2008-9 final between Forest Green Rovers and AFC Telford United went straight to penalties. The semi-finals and final are contested at the ground of the club higher ranked in the league. The first round is scheduled for October, with the intention that teams are unlikely to find themselves contesting the Conference League Cup at the same time as they play in the FA Cup and to a lesser extent, the FA Trophy, thus reducing the workload of even the more successful teams.

As an added incentive to attract greater crowds and more interest and commitment, the Football Conference announced that it has arranged a deal with Setanta Sports, the competition's sponsor, to provide live television coverage of the latter stages of the competition, thus generating much-needed revenue as well as interest from non-Conference sources.

Predecessors

Football Conference Challenge Cup

The predecessor to the Setanta Shield was the one-season Football Conference Challenge Cup. The competition was formed for the 2004-05 Conference season as a competition in the style of the Football League Cup, with a series of one-leg matches played in a knockout tournament fashion, with extra time and penalties deciding the result in the event of a tied scoreline at the end of full-time, rather than the replay style of the FA Cup and other FA tournaments.

Although the Challenge Cup was announced before the start of the season, the format of the tournament was not decided upon until over a month after the season's games had started. The cup gained the sponsorship of Gladwish Land Sales, becoming the "GLS Cup".

The Challenge Cup was announced as scrapped shortly before the official start of the 2005-06 season.

Nevertheless, though its first season was blighted with misfortune, the competition did otherwise run smoothly, with Woking beating Stalybridge Celtic 1-0 in the final.

Conference League Cup

The Conference league cup had previously run for the first 21 seasons of the Football Conference's existence. The tournament was always considered as tertiary in importance to the FA Trophy and FA Cup. Like its successors, it struggled for attendances from fans. However, it did provide many clubs with the opportunity to win silverware that would otherwise have been missing.

Winners

Season	Winner	Runner-up
1979–80	Northwich Victoria	Altrincham
1980–81	Altrincham	Kettering Town
1981–82	Weymouth	Enfield
1982–83	Runcorn	Scarborough
1983–84	Scarborough	Barnet
1984–85	Runcorn	Maidstone United
1985–86	Stafford Rangers	Barnet
1986–87	Kettering Town	Hendon
1987–88	Horwich RMI	Weymouth
1988–89	Barnet	Hyde United
1989–90	Yeovil Town	Kidderminster Harriers
1990–91	Sutton United	Barrow
1991–92	Wycombe Wanderers	Runcorn
1992–93	Northwich Victoria	Wycombe Wanderers
1993–94	Macclesfield Town	Yeovil Town
1994–95	Bromsgrove Rovers	Kettering Town
1995–96	Bromsgrove Rovers	Macclesfield Town
1996–97	Kidderminster Harriers	Macclesfield Town
1997–98	Morecambe	Woking
1998–99	Doncaster Rovers	Farnborough Town
1999–00	Doncaster Rovers	Kingstonian
2000–01	Chester City	Kingstonian
2001–02	not held
2002–03
2003–04
2004–05	Woking	Stalybridge Celtic
2005–06	not held
2006–07
2007–08	Aldershot Town	Rushden & Diamonds
2008–09	AFC Telford United	Forest Green Rovers
2009–10	not held
2010–11

References

1. ^ "Setanta Shield announced with league match draw date". BBC Sport. 2007-07-03. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/6240754.stm. Retrieved 2007-06-26.