Ordinarily, I’d say that trying to argue that 6th division part-time football falls under the scope of ‘elite sport’ during a global pandemic is a little tenuous. Because it is. However, if the definition of ‘elite’ football in this country has already been stretched far enough to include the likes of Boreham Wood vs Harrogate Town, then there is certainly less of a case to continue to exclude much bigger clubs in the league below.
If it came to it, it would be interesting to see how many clubs would actually be prepared to take the financial risk of entering the playoffs. Most of the talk during lockdown has been around the survival of non-league football and lobbying for additional funding from the Premier League sides, from the FA, or even from the top-level football players themselves, just to stay afloat. With dire warnings of football clubs going out of existence altogether.
And so it would seem quite a jump to suddenly find that there was £500k-£700k floating around the regional leagues to enable a few play-off games to take place.