Golden Goal: Neil Grewcock saves Burnley v Orient (1987) | Tom Davies

The day Burnley, two-time league champions and European pioneers, came within a whisker of falling into the non-league

The introduction of automatic promotion and relegation from the Football League is not one of the most discussed of English football’s many transformative developments in the late-80s/early-90s but it remodelled the lower-division landscape irreversibly.

Ushered in for the 1986-87 season, at a time of falling attendances everywhere, the reform was welcomed as offering ambitious non-league clubs a chance to crash a closed shop clogged up by teams routinely dismissed as deadwood but re-elected most years anyhow. It also promised an injection of extra tension to the season’s run-in – and, in its first season, how it delivered.

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