Jersey Bulls: The non-league club with 36 successive wins but yet to finish a season

Jersey Bulls' last league game was in September when they beat Ash United 3-2

Manchester City's run of 19 successive wins has got headlines around the world, but what if you were part of a team that has a run almost twice as long and has still to win anything?

That is the dilemma facing Jersey Bulls after the club had a second successive season declared null and void.

The Combined Counties League Division One side have never lost a competitive match - their record is 36 successive wins from 36 competitive games since they were formed in 2019 and they had already secured promotion before their league was cancelled last season because of the onset of the Coved-19 pandemic.

Skip forward almost a year and the same thing has happened again to the most southerly team in the English football pyramid.

"We're taking it really well," Jersey Bulls director Ian Horswell tells BBC Sport in a video call from the self-governing Channel Island.

"We actually agree with the decision this year."

• Steps 3-6 of non-league declared null and void

The Bulls have only played four league matches this season - the last was on 26 September - as restrictions on travel to and from the island were introduced to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

"We're quite a few games behind everyone else in our league so we would have been playing an exaggerated catch-up plan which could have been as daft as playing three games in a weekend, with two games on a Saturday.

"What this decision gives us as a football club now is some certainty.

"Now it's curtailed we can focus on next season, the financial aspect of next season and bringing in potential new sponsors where we've got vacancies."

Promotion despite not finishing a season?

Jersey Bulls were formed in the summer of 2019 and have yet to lose a competitive game

So what now for a team that are clearly too good for step six of the non-league pyramid with a ground that has 1,000 seats and a capacity at least two or three times that?

The Football Association is to look at reorganising the structure of non-league football, and Horswell is hopeful that if there are places in a higher division his club will be given the chance to move up.

"If you were to aggregate this season's league with last season's league, despite us playing nine fewer games, we're still top of the league by a point.

"It just sums up where we are. It would be very difficult for anybody to say that Jersey Bulls FC do not deserve a promotion.

"We'd love to play step five football. Our players deserve the opportunity having been mathematically promoted last season to play a step higher.

"We're aren't being arrogant about it, we are at least a step five club, so we'll just have to wait and see what comes out in the wash."

FA Cup dream

Jersey Bulls play their home games at Springfield Stadium in St Helier

A move to step five would also allow a bit of English football history to be made as the club would be guaranteed a place in the FA Cup.

"No men's team has ever entered the FA Cup in Jersey," explains Horswell, who managed a local club side before taking a role in the project after the island was refused entry to Uefa three years ago.

"If we do get restructured and moved up, then we will play in the FA Cup next year, which will be super exciting for Jersey football, even Jersey as an island.

"The BBC follow it from right at the start with the red button and if we were at home in the preliminary round it wouldn't surprise me if they came to Jersey to film that game because it's an historic moment - the most southerly football fixture ever to be played in the FA Cup."

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