The challenge will not be any easier this year. Wrexham have spent the same period as Luton floundering fruitlessly in their quest to take league football back to North Wales.
The financial commitment of a significant number of Conference outfits is attracting a discernibly advanced quality of player to this level. Consequently, the gulf to the division one step above is negligible. It is most certainly far removed from the chasm that existed when Lincoln could plot their way straight back up in 1988, a feat which was matched by Darlington in 1990. Colchester United, in 1992, earned Number 1 spot by accruing 94 points, a year on from falling a meagre two points short of making their own instant relegation recovery.
Now, the Conference is awash with outfits either associated with their own headier Football League days, or renowned for past famous cup deeds.
Cambridge United, Grimsby Town, Lincoln, and Macclesfield, are just some of those who will be putting towering barriers in the way of Luton and Wrexham’s frantic hopes of finally escaping their own Bermuda Triangle.
It is not uncommon for ex-League members to end up as title winners or victors in the Wembley play-off decider (the esteemed location of that fixture further emphasising the unparalleled stature this grade of football presently carries). That, in large part, owes to the high proportion of Conference sides routinely fitting that description – over half of the teams kicking of the new Premier campaign next month have formerly been part of the league.
Nevertheless, any suggestion that it is the traditionally more illustrious clubs who exclusively come out on top is not entirely accurate. Progressive and fiercely ambitious outfits such as Crawley Town and Fleetwood Town, whose spending and canny management won them the Conference titles of 2011 and 2012, respectively, demonstrate that a familiar name is not a pre-requisite for success.
Only last term, Newport County, whose demotion out of the league in 1988 preceded the folding and re-forming of the club, proved too good for Wrexham in the play-off final. That seismic moment in the Exiles’ history, propelled by the wealth of local EuroMillions lottery winner, Les Scadding, came a mere three years after their entering the Premier as champions of the Conference South.
Even among the slew of storied clubs, the non-league game has plenty of room for fairy-tales – and a few sobering ones as well. Stockport County, relegated in April, will start this campaign as a member of the Conference North, 12 years after opening a Championship season against Coventry City in front of 9,379 at their Edgeley Park home.
It needn’t spell the end for the Greater Manchester club though. Just as the jolt provided by life outside the league doesn’t have to act as a doomsday scenario for Aldershot, – whose own fiscal difficulties ensure that staying alive is their sole short-term focus – nor Barnet, whose Dutch head coach, Edgar Davids, has remained firmly in situ despite the prospect of Conference football.
That vote of confidence, proffered by a man whose playing career included decorated stops at A.C. Milan, Juventus, Barcelona, and Ajax, is not unique.
BT Sport will be screening 30 live matches in the Conference Premier for each of the next two seasons while, only today, a new 36 month title sponsorship with global online payment company, Skrill, covering all 3 Conference Divisions, has been announced.
Those same three divisions enticed an average of 34,556 people to pay into its stadiums each week during the 2012/2013 campaign.
Brighton & Hove Albion now have their eyes on far loftier prizes than on that chilling day in 1997. But, as the vanquished Hereford United are able to attest, far from a road to nowhere, Conference football is a progressive, fiercely combative, high-octane, often thrilling meritocracy. Now, if they could just get out of it.
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