This is a pedantic post regards Mace's latest Magpie Circle podcast but a few here might be interested to know the real reason we have 4 up 4 down between tiers 3 and 4.

Mace mentioned the latest push for 3 up 3 down between tiers 4 & 5 and then went on to say that 4 up 4 down was a legacy of Div 3 North and South, from which only the champions of each went up and the bottom 2 in each applied for re-election. So it'd be a bit of a stretch to say 4 up 4 down came out of that arrangement and in actual fact when the FL finally agreed to nationalising 3N and 3S in June 1957 (to begin with 58/59) they settled on having 2 up and 2 down as per 1st and 2nd tiers, Doncaster Rovers however proposed 4 up 4 down but the FL said no. A year later, with the national 3 and 4 divisions about to start for 1958/59 the FL decided Doncaster's idea might be a good one and agreed to go with 4 up 4 down in a one season experiment, which proved popular enough to get voted in permanently in April 1959.