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The Northern Premier League is one of the regional men's football leagues in England which sits directly below the National League featuring semi-professional and amateur clubs. Geographically, the league covers all of Northern England, and the northern areas of the Midlands. Originally just one division, a second division was added in 1987: Division One. This new division was split twenty years later (2007) into Division One North and Division One South. Together with the Southern League and the Isthmian League it forms level 7–8 of the English football league system. It has various regional feeder leagues at level 9 and, due to restructuring, from 2005 onwards its champions/playoff winners have been promoted to the National League North division rather than the National League's top division as was previously the case. It is, however, also possible for these teams to be promoted to the National League South. Due to title sponsorship deals, the league has been billed under various names, including a sixteen-year spell as the Unibond League, the longest such deal in world football. When this deal ended in 2010, a new deal was announced which will see the competition billed as the Evo-Stik League until at least the 2015–16 season. ==History== The Northern Premier League (NPL) was founded in 1968, as the northern equivalent of the Southern League, decades after the other two leagues at what is now the seventh tier of the English football league system, the Isthmian League and the Southern League. At that time they were the highest level non-League division below The Football League, the same level as the other league in Northern England, the Northern League. Over the next two decades, the NPL successfully displaced its older rival to become the pre-eminent regional competition in Northern England, with the Northern League eventually forced to accept status as feeder league to the NPL. In 1979, upon the creation of the Alliance Premier League (which later became the Conference), the NPL became a feeder league and fell down one level in the English football league system, and with the Conference's addition of regional divisions in 2004 the NPL was demoted by a further tier and there are now two levels between it and the Football League. From 1992–93 to 1994–95 the League's Division One included two non-English clubs, Caernarfon Town from Wales and Gretna from Scotland, who have since joined their countries' league systems. Colwyn Bay, Bangor City, Newtown, and Rhyl have also played in the league. 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「Northern Premier League」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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