Football League Third Division South
The
Football League Third Division South was a level of
English professional
football which ran in parallel to
Third Division North from
1921 to
1958.
The division was created in
1921 from the
Third Division, formed one year earlier when
the Football League absorbed the entire top division of the
Southern League, effectively ending the ambitions of that league to rival the Football League. Before the creation of the Third Division, most of the Football League's clubs were from the industrial areas of the North and Midlands, with only 7 of its 44 members based in the South (
Arsenal,
Chelsea,
Clapton Orient,
Fulham,
Tottenham Hotspur and
West Ham United, all from
London, and
Bristol City).
The following season, a Northern section was created, and the original division was renamed Third Division South. The exceptions to this were
Crystal Palace, who were promoted to the
Second Division,
Grimsby Town who transferred to the Third Division North and
Abedare Athletic and
Charlton Athletic who joined for the first time. Several Midlands-based teams were included in the South division, even though most were geographically closer to their Northern division rivals.
The division originally had 22 teams, expanding to 24 in
1950. Only one promotion place was available to the Second Division, meaning that many clubs spent long periods of time stuck in the division, and several were never promoted in the division's 31 seasons. At the end of each season, the bottom two clubs were put up for re-election, alongside the bottom two in the Northern section, although most survived the re-election vote.
In
1958, the North and South sections were merged together, to form a single
Third Division and a new
Fourth Division.
