Cambridge Wins!

Cambridge has its own professional football club, Cambridge United Football Club, and the club scored a dramatic victory today against Stevenage Borough FC en route to a playoff for promotion to the (lowest division of) the Football League.  If they win the playoff final at Wembley stadium in a couple of weeks, they will be promoted.

I had in the back of my mind to see a CUFC match while in the UK, but never got round to it.  I feel fortunate to have discovered the match today so I could listen on BBC Radio.  It was really exciting!  Cambridge had lost the first leg to Stevenage at Stevenage, 3 to 1.  The second leg was played in Cambridge, so they needed a 3 goal advantage today to win the overall contest.  They managed to score two goals in the second half to tie the aggregate score, and then scored the winner with one minute to go in the 30-minute extra time.  Very exciting!  Now I'm tempted to go for tickets for the Wembley match.  Better late than never, right?

OK, here's some background for you non-football types.  CUFC is part of the Football Conference, the lowest of UK football leagues.  The Conference is semi-professional, really, and Cambridge FC is in the top division of it called the Blue Square Premier League.  Cambridge played in the Football League at one point, but hasn't been there in a while.

The two other big conglomerate football leagues are the Football League and the Premier League.  You can basically think of the Football League as akin to the minor leagues in US Baseball (in both cases there are three divisions, with the clubs of each division increasing in quality), and the Premier League as like the Major Leagues.

An important, and interesting, difference with US pro baseball is that all clubs, whether in the Conference, Football League, or Premier League, are autonomous; lower-division teams are not development teams owned by some top-league club.  As such, whole teams are promoted up, or relegated down.  The top three first-division Football League teams and the bottom three Premier League teams swap places at the end of the season.  Likewise, teams are promoted within the Football League.  And, relevant to the current topic, the top two teams of the top Conference division are promoted to the Fourth Division, the lowest division of the Football League.  The league champion is promoted outright, and the second spot is determined by playoff; in this case, Cambridge was the top seed in the four-team playoff, and will play the winner of Histon-Torquay United.

To Wembley and glory!