Football League Third Division
English former association football league
The Football League Third Division was the third tier of the English football league system in 1920–21 and again from 1958 until 1992. When the FA Premier League was formed, the Third Division was renamed as the new Second Division, although continuing as the third tier. The previous Second Division (remaining as the second tier) was renamed as the new First Division. In 2004, following the renaming of the First Division as the Football League Championship, the division was renamed Football League One.
Early attempts
Following the close of the 1910–11 season, the Football League initiated proceedings to add a new division, having received the approval of more than thirty of the forty member clubs. At least sixteen teams would have been required to apply for this to proceed. Representatives from a number of prominent non-league clubs - among them Lincoln City, recently voted out of the League - agreed to form a twenty-team Third Division. This was ultimately rejected by the Football League, who were concerned with the impact it would have on other leagues but were receptive to hearing a more detailed proposal for the following season. Seventeen clubs pledged themselves definitively to the new league: Cardiff City, Chesterfield, Crewe Alexandra, Croydon Common, Darlington, Hartlepool United, Lincoln City, Port Vale, Portsmouth, Rochdale, Rotherham Town, Southend United, South Liverpool, South Shields, Southport Central, St. Helens Town, Walsall.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Football League Third Division” is english former association football league. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Football, League and Third, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1436448. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1958, 1992 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Football League Third Division” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.