HERE'S a query for you. Lancaster City play in the Unibond League. Morecambe play in something called the Nationwide Football Conference, a competition in which all the teams play each other twice for points -- a league by any other name.

Why, then, are both clubs patronisingly, dismissively and inaccurately referred to as 'non-league'?

With this sweeping and meaningless description our two local sides reputation for good football is swept away as they are pushed into the same category as bunch of kids kicking a ball about in the park.

Yet many of the senior semi-professional sides have a set up which puts the football league timeservers to shame.

It's no surprise to see the likes of Kidderminster, Macclesfield, Barnet, Wycombe and Cheltenham more than holding their own in divisions two and three, while clubs coming down often look out of their depth.

But, like the ludicrous and unjustifiable decision not to introduce a reasonable number of promotion places, the indiscriminate use of the 'non-league' tag reflects the contempt the smalltime crooks, alien abductees and cigar-smoking butchers and bakers who run third division AFC Nowhereville and their ilk hold the conference and its feeder leagues in.

But, when one season they find themselves without a football league seat as the music stops we'll see how happy they are with the sop of a place in that most prestigious competition, the autoglasswindcreenshieldcuptrophythingamy.

Until then, we live in hope...