REGARDING your article "Soccer crisis: Millennium melt-down" (LET, February 11), it seems to me that East Lancashire's senior non-League clubs are in the same position they were in just under 90 years ago.

For the financial strain of playing in the Lancashire Football Combination was the cause for concern back in April and May in 1910.

In those days, Accrington Stanley, Chorley, Great Harwood, Colne, Nelson, Haslingden, Rossendale United, Bacup and Darwen, all members of the Combination, were asked to consider a number of schemes to help with club finances at the league's annual general meeting.

They were asked:

1) Should the League scrap its first and second divisions and re-model on a geographical basis?

2) Should there be a weekly maximum wage bill for each club?

3) Should changes be made to players' agreements regarding right of discharge, training and wages?

4) Should players have to live within 12 miles of their club?

The AGM's initial decision was to re-organise on a geographical basis and introduce a maximum weekly wage limit - which would have eased the financial difficulties of some local clubs.

It caused uproar. Players threatened to strike.

Senior clubs threatened to quit and form another league. Blackpool FC's representative said the new rules would pull down the stronger clubs to the level of the weaker and poorer clubs, reducing the standard of the league.

After a series of further meetings, the new rules were rescinded.

It would be the same today.

The introduction of a maximum wage in non-League football is an impossibility under the current football pyramid of leagues leading to the ultimate goal of Football League status.

Clubs like Accrington Stanley, Chorley and Great Harwood, and East Lancashire's other non-League clubs must realise that if they want to compete at the highest levels, then, as with everything in life, there is a price to pay. And if they are not prepared to pay it or cannot afford to pay it, then the consequences are relegation until they find a league status they can compete at and exist at on a financially-secure level.

There will never be a "level playing field." There wasn't one 90 years ago, there isn't one now and there won't be one in the future.

ALAN SMITH, Burnley Road, Padiham (trustee, Padiham Football Club - founded 1878).

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.