A Love Letter to the Championship

I love the Championship.

There. I've said it.

We watch a lot of football in our house, but there is something about the English Championship that gets me every time.

It isn't always beautiful. It isn't supposed to be.

It's tough. Uncompromising. Relentless.

And this morning, it starts all over again.

Wolves against Blackburn at Molineux.

Game one.

Only 45 to go.

Summer at Molineux

Today the supporters are in T-shirts.

The managers still have their summer tans and summer lingers over Molineux, the sunshine making the gold of the Wolves shirts look warm.

Around 31,000 people are there to begin the journey again.

We sat in that stadium last season and experienced some of the angst of Wolves' Premier League season ourselves.

It was miserable at times. The frustration around Molineux was palpable.

At one point the Wolves supporters were chanting:

"We are shit."

Football supporters.

But look at them today.

They're back.

Of course they're back.

Because it's Wolves.

It's their club.

You can be furious with your club. You can despair at the recruitment. You can abuse the manager. You can spend Saturday afternoon telling anyone who will listen that half the team isn't fit to wear the shirt.

And then the following Saturday?

You're back in your seat.

That's football.

Loyal until the end.

They know what they're missing

And Wolves aren't alone.

That's another thing I love about the Championship.

So many of these clubs have already been at the top.

They've played in the Premier League. Their supporters have walked into Old Trafford, Anfield, Stamford Bridge and the Emirates following their team.

They've felt it.

They've loved it.

They've lost it.

And they want it again.

They know exactly what promotion means because they know exactly what they've lost.

Above the Championship sits the Premier League.

The holy grail.

For some clubs, automatic promotion is a realistic expectation. For others, reaching the play-offs would be a dream.

And those play-offs.

After 46 league games, an entire season can eventually come down to one afternoon at Wembley.

Win and you're in the Premier League.

Imagine the pressure.

Surviving the Championship

But first you have to survive it.

Twenty-four clubs.

Twenty-three opponents.

Home and away.

Forty-six league games.

Then there is the League Cup.

The FA Cup.

Maybe a cup run.

Maybe the play-offs.

Saturday. Tuesday. Saturday again.

Cold nights. Horrible away trips. Injuries. Suspensions. Players exhausted. Managers sacked.

Another game arriving before you've really had time to dissect the last one.

A Championship side can find itself playing fifty-plus competitive matches in a season.

It is relentless.

And I love it.

You can't bluff your way through 46 league games.

A brilliant August won't get you promoted and a terrible September doesn't necessarily condemn you.

There is time for a team to evolve.

Time for a young player to break through.

Time for a manager to change things.

Time for a club to wobble, recover and go again.

A proper football season develops its own story.

Meanwhile, in Tasmania...

And this is where, sitting in Hobart at some ridiculous hour of the morning watching the Championship begin, I had one of those moments.

Forty-six games.

We had 18.

Not only did Tasmania's NPL clubs play an 18-game league season in 2026, the league season finished last weekend.

Five of our ten clubs are now completely finished for the year.

Boots away.

See you in 2027.

The other five move into a four-week finals series which, let's face it, looks rather more Australian Rules than traditional football.

South Hobart finished top and were crowned league champions. Now we embark on a finals series to find a Grand Final winner.

Very Australian.

Whether you like finals or not is almost a separate argument.

What bothers me far more is this:

Why have we finished the actual league in early August?

We are still in winter

That's the bit I can't get past.

It is 15 August as I write this.

We are still in winter.

There are months of perfectly playable football weather ahead of us, yet half the clubs in Tasmania's highest men's competition have finished playing competitive football for the year.

And we talk endlessly about player development.

Pathways.

High performance.

Talent identification.

Representative football.

Opportunities.

Preparing young Tasmanian players for the next level.

But eventually there is one fairly fundamental ingredient required to develop footballers.

Football.

Young players need meaningful matches.

They need good weeks and bad weeks. They need to lose and respond. They need opportunities to force their way into teams.

Coaches need time to develop players, change systems, make mistakes, fix them and go again.

That's development too.

Eighteen

Imagine stopping the Championship after 18 games.

"Righto everyone. That's the season. Thanks for coming."

They'd think you were joking.

They wouldn't even have played every opponent once.

And they would still have 28 league matches remaining.

Twenty-eight!

That's ten more league matches still ahead of them than our entire Tasmanian NPL season.

Now, before somebody starts furiously typing at me, I know Tasmania isn't England.

Of course it isn't.

Nobody is suggesting our players should play 46 league games. The Championship schedule is brutal and there is a legitimate argument that it asks too much of players.

But surely there is quite a lot of room between 18 and 46.

Twenty-four?

Twenty-seven?

Thirty?

I don't pretend there is one magical number.

But I struggle to believe the right number is 18.

And I struggle even more with a system where the amount of football a young player gets depends upon whether his club finishes fifth or sixth.

Finish fifth and you've got more football.

Finish sixth and your season is over in early August.

Surely development shouldn't work like that.

Anyway, back to the Championship

Because this is a love letter.

And I do love it.

The grounds.

The supporters.

The tackles.

The noise.

The jeopardy.

The clubs with enormous histories trying to find their way back to the Premier League.

The smaller clubs trying to bloody the noses of the big boys.

The February night when two exhausted teams are kicking lumps out of each other because both desperately need three points.

The manager who looks doomed at Christmas and somehow has his team in the play-offs by April.

And then those final weeks when somebody inevitably starts doing Championship mathematics.

"If we beat them, they draw with them, and those two lose..."

Wonderful.

Full metal jacket football.

No prisoners taken.

Today they're in T-shirts at Molineux.

The managers have their summer tans and the August sunshine is making those gold Wolves shirts glow.

Make the most of it.

Before long it'll be beanies, scarves, heavy coats and freezing nights under the floodlights.

And they'll still be playing.

The supporters will still be turning up.

Because it's their club.

Because many of them have been to the Premier League and know what it feels like.

Because they want it again.

Because there is always next Saturday.

And because that's football.

Here in Tasmania, half our league has already gone home.

It's August.