Notts County: How promotion to the EFL returns a 'badge of honour' to Magpies
- Published
Notts County have been promoted for the 14th time in their history
For 1,471 days, the five words that defined Notts County were nowhere to be seen at their Meadow Lane home.
A penalty shootout win at the end of an extraordinary National League promotion final against Chesterfield at Wembley on Saturday changed all that, as they secured their return to the English Football League after a four-year absence.
Their relegation to non-league football for the first time in 2019 meant 161-year-old Notts, a founding member of the Football League in 1888, lost their mantle as the 'world's oldest football league club'.
Signs proclaiming Notts' place in the annals of the game, which were all around their home ground, were either taken down or covered over with black tape.
For the Magpies, the years of non-league exile were dark days.
Cedwyn Scott finally ended the years of purgatory with the decisive penalty in their 4-3 shootout win against the Spireites after Notts twice battled back to draw 2-2 at the end of extra time.
"In context it's enormous, it's a massive moment in the history of the club," Notts County boss Luke Williams told BBC Sport.
"We have shut the door on the worst times the club has experienced since its beginning.
"Now we are trying to walk through the next door.
"This is a huge moment to now continue to rebuild the image and brand Notts County and try to step it forward to where it should be."
Notts County historian Michael Chappell, 79, is a lifelong fan who can trace his family's lineage of support back to his great grandfather, who was born just two years after the Magpies were founded.
"I've seen the best and worst," Chappell told BBC Sport about his decades of following the East Midlands club.
"It's been a humbling experience in the National League.
"I'd prefer to go to the great football pitch in heaven with us being a league club and preferably a league club with a reputation for being on the up."
'A badge of honour'
Notts County are famed for being the team that gave Italian giants Juventus their iconic black and whites stripes - a link that got the Magpies invited to Turin in 2011 as the opponents the Serie A club wanted to play first when they opened their stadium.
Juve are known as the 'Old Lady' of Italian football, but Notts' place as elders of the game is best summed up by their ability to seamlessly adopt the tag of 'world's oldest professional club' when their league status was taken away.
And while the mantle of 'world's oldest football league club' is not as catchy, a little clunky and in need of explanation to anyone unfamiliar with the football pyramid in England - when leagues are still leagues outside the Football League - it places them at the front of the line of sporting trailblazers.
"It is treasured by fans to have it back," Chappell said. "It means the world because it's such a badge of honour.
"The history does bind a lot of people to the club. We are proud of it, fans are proud to be part of it. It's passed on through the generations.
"It has almost been our epitaph, but that little saying is something you can hang on to, it gets us recognition."
'Notts to push onward'
Notts County are also a club with a chaotic history.
They were there as one of the 12 teams that formed the Football League and were also among the sides to vote for the creation of the Premier League more than three decades ago - although they are one of just two sides, alongside Luton Town, that had a vote who have never played in that competition.
Their very existence has been threatened a number of times since they last played in the top flight in 1992, having endured administration, a fraudulent takeover, numerous winding-up petitions and a former owner who inadvertently exposed himself on social media as the club was plummeting to its lowest depths.
Danish brothers Alexander and Christoffer Reedtz took control of Notts after they dropped into the National League, and while their influence has not been as headline grabbing as Wrexham's Hollywood owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, they have transformed how the Magpies operate.
While Reynolds and McElhenney have made a docuseries about figuring out how to run a football club, the Reedtz brothers put all they knew as owners of statistical analytics company Football Radar to the ultimate test.
Their success is best defined by signing record-breaking National League striker Macaulay Langstaff and promotion-clinching hero Scott while the club were without a manager last summer.
And in Williams, whose only previous job as manager ended with Swindon being relegated from League One in 2017, they found a tactician to guide Notts to the 14th promotion in their history - a feat that sees him join Neil Warnock, Sam Allardyce and Notts great Jimmy Sirrel on the list of those to get Magpies up over the years.
"It feels like we have completed one year's work and that we have much longer-term goals," Williams said.
"It doesn't feel like we have arrived at our destination, we are very much on the path to push onward.
"I don't think that we are where we want to end up at all."