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Relocation of professional sports teams in the United kingdom is a practice which involves a sports team moving from one metropolitan area to another, although occasionally moves between municipalities in the same conurbation are also included. For relocations in other part of the world see ''Relocation of professional sports teams''. In British sport, the relocation of teams away from their traditional districts is unusual because of the nature of the relationship between clubs and their fans: the local football club is regarded by most English football supporters as part of the local identity and social fabric rather than as a business that can be transplanted by its owners at will. As a result, any relocation plan would be strongly opposed by fans in the club's original area, and unlikely to succeed in most new locations due to the existence of established teams in most towns and cities that would already have secured the loyalty of native supporters. John Bale, summarising a study published in 1974, writes that, in the view of most fans, "Chelsea would simply not be Chelsea" were that club to move a few miles within the same borough to Wormwood Scrubs. However, there have been examples of club relocations, primarily motivated by difficult financial situations or problems with the home ground. So far this article lists 75 relocated teams, 8 failed relocation proposals, and 75 changes in identity in total. ==Association Football== The geographic redistribution of the 92 Football League teams was considered a possible eventuality by some around that time, including Sir Norman Chester, who headed an investigation into the condition of English football in 1968.〔 Before the 1986–87 season, clubs could not be relegated out of the League's Fourth Division. The bottom four clubs had to apply for re-election by the other member clubs at the end of each season, alongside any non-League teams who wished to take their place,〔 but the replacement of an established League side in this way was quite rare. From the inaugural post-war season (1946–47) through to 1985–86, clubs already in the League were supplanted on only six occasions. "New communities have developed ... which lack clubs in League membership," Chester reported, in 1968. "Amalgamations of old clubs would provide vacancies for new clubs to enter the League. Alternatively the movement of established clubs to new communities could provide a way both of saving old clubs and at the same time bringing League football to new and growing areas." Having been established in 1967 as the largest of the "new towns" springing up across southern England and the Midlands, Milton Keynes provided a clear staging ground for such an experiment.〔 At the end of the 1978–79 season, 20 leading non-League clubs left the Southern League and the Northern Premier League to form the Alliance Premier League. This national non-League division started in the 1979–80 season and renamed itself the Football Conference in 1986. Since the 1986–87 season, the champions of the Conference have received promotion to the Football League, with the League's bottom club being relegated to the Conference in exchange. This was expanded to the Conference champions and the winners of a promotion play-off before the 2002–03 season, with the worst two League clubs being relegated. The situation of the Football League "closed shop", which for nearly a century effectively barred most non-League clubs from accession, therefore no longer exists. According to the Football League's statement to the independent commission on Wimbledon F.C. in May 2002, the English League "had allowed temporary relocations for good reasons outside 'conurbations' in respect of certain clubs where it was intended the club would return, but there has been no previous occasion on which the Football League had granted permission to a club to relocate permanently to a ground outside its 'conurbation'."〔 Clubs in the English professional ranks that have relocated to other locales within their traditional conurbations include Manchester United and Woolwich Arsenal, who moved and respectively in 1910 and 1913. South Shields of the Third Division North relocated west to Gateshead in 1930 and renamed themselves Gateshead A.F.C.. The commission reported that there was no Football League precedent for a move between conurbations, but stressed that there was direct precedent for such a move in Scotland. Promotion and relegation in and out of the Scottish Professional Football League was not introduced until the league system's reorganisation in 2014; until then it was nearly impossible for sides outside the League to join. Scottish League membership therefore remained largely restricted to well-established cities as opposed to new towns. Two Scottish League teams left their metropolitan districts for new towns during the 1990s. Third-flight club Clyde moved from Shawfield Stadium (close to Rutherglen in the south-east of Glasgow) to the new town of Cumbernauld, about to the north-east, in 1994,〔 and a year later Meadowbank Thistle, a struggling Edinburgh club in the fourth tier, relocated amid fans' protests about west to another new town, Livingston.〔 Clyde kept their original name,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.clydefc.co.uk/club/history/fresh-start/ )〕 while Meadowbank renamed themselves Livingston Football Club.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.livingstonfc.co.uk/history/history_meadowbank.php )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Relocation of sports teams in the United Kingdom」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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