If the flavour of a football season is defined by its title races, the English professional game has served up pretty thin gruel in 2024/25.

Liverpool have run away with the Premier League. In the Championship, Leeds United’s top-flight return under Daniel Farke has developed a growing sense of inevitability. Birmingham City are coasting at the top of League One and will win the division in short order.

Only in League Two do we find a battle worthy of the name and even then it’s because Walsall, for so long unstoppable, have found ever more novel ways to stop themselves. Dominant National League leaders Barnet will soon be champions but the sixth tier – where English football splits into northern and southern sections – is cooking up a storm.

The top five teams in the National League South are all in the fight and it’s only the sheer number of teams above them that will probably prevent the next two from getting involved too.

The South is an all-out prison brawl. In the National League North, Brackley Town and Kidderminster Harriers are engaged in a slugfest for the right to take a pop at leaders Scunthorpe United.

When Harriers visited St James Park on a chilly Tuesday night in March, both teams were playing their game in hand on Scunthorpe. The Iron, possibly distracted by rumours of an idiotic takeover with the worst possible timing, were four points clear of Brackley. Kidderminster were a point further behind.

There’s no other way to describe it: Brackley Town v Kidderminster Harriers was a big, pivotal, season-shaping match. St James Park is no stranger to those.

Brackley is quiet. Not sleepy, exactly, but quiet.

Now enveloped by the epic scars of HS2, it’s an ancient market town in motorsport country, tucked away in the extreme south-west of Northamptonshire and home to a population of 16,000 largely absent in daylight hours.

The High Street is the town’s distinct spine. Dotted with a familiar assortment of abandoned shopfronts, hardy local businesses and the pervasive chains that would still stand in every small English town in the aftermath of nuclear war, it turns into Market Place as it descends towards Brackley’s southern edge.

It meets the junction of Banbury Road and Bridge Street, which has as its first tributary Churchill Way. St James Park is at the end, nestled near the heel of the town where the Operations Centre of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 team marks the outer limit.

Strolling along the High Street on the afternoon of Kidderminster’s crucial visit, there’s little indication of what’s to come.

The roots of non-league football clubs wind around the foundations of our towns but they’re often deeply buried, invisible to the pottering majority as they go about their business mere yards away. Brackley has a football club of which it can be proud, playing at a high level and in a stadium that’s the envy of most teams in the region.

Brackley Town came into existence in 1890 and moved to St James Park, their third ground, in 1974. They were promoted to English football’s sixth tier for the first time as Southern League Premier Division Champions in 2012 and have been there ever since.

The Saints won the FA Trophy in 2018 but have otherwise been the nearly men of non-league football. They fought tooth and nail to avoid relegation in 2014/15 and 2015/16 but have been in the play-off picture or the play-offs themselves in every other season.

‘These games are what we live for’

For the last three years, Brackley have lost at home in the play-offs and missed out on promotion. In the last two seasons those defeats were in the final. Two years ago, Kidderminster were their conquerors.

Brackley’s manager, Gavin Cowan, knew what was at stake.

“They don’t get much bigger,” he told the Northampton Chronicle & Echo.

“We believe in our own abilities and we believe we’re a fantastic club and that we can really push these teams to the wire. I don’t see why we can’t go and win on Tuesday but make no mistake, we’re going to have to be at our very best to achieve that.

“These games are what we live for. It’s what we’ve been working hard for this season and it’s time to enjoy it.”

Like their opposition, the Saints went into the Kidderminster game in promotion form. Since losing at Hereford on February 1st, they’d won eight of their eleven fixtures, losing twice. Harriers represented an increased degree of difficulty but also Brackley’s last meeting with any other team in the National League North’s top half.

By the time the Kidderminster coach pulled into Churchill Way almost two months later than originally scheduled and in rather more tolerable weather, the roads around St James Park were noticeably busier than a typical Brackley matchday.

They don't get much bigger.

Harriers jump into the occasion

St James Park was abuzz. 1,777 filed into the stands in anticipation of a decisive fixture which was, in the end, short on incident but loaded with tension.

Kidderminster beat Brackley 1-0 at Aggborough in August thanks to a first-half Ashley Hemmings goal and the same hell befell the Saints second time around.

Managed by former Hull City boss Phil Brown, Harriers controlled the first half. They were stronger in the physical battle and superior in possession, keeping Brackley at arm’s length for all but a couple of minutes.

Brackley reduced themselves to George Carline’s long throw-ins and a handful of corners, all dealt with quite comfortably by their visitors. The Saints’ cause was punctured and ultimately sunk by the only goal of the game, scored by prolific former Walsall forward Hemmings inside the first five minutes.

It was a tremendous header that met a David Worrall cross from the right wing and went in off the foot of the far post. Goalkeeper Jonny Maxted could only watch. His team-mates struggled to mount a response and Kidderminster dominated the half.

Apparently, a social media sensation appeared on the pitch at half time. Nobody cared.

Cowan squeezed a much improved performance from his Brackley players in the second half. Passes connected in the final third. Midfielder Scott Pollock was carrying the ball and breaking lines. The Saints had their moments.

Their sleekest move led to their best chance, taking them in behind the Harriers defence and leaving the ever willing Matt Lowe with a clear shot at goal. He couldn’t sort his feet out in time for a pure strike. Kyle Morrison tidied up for Kiddy.

Play-offs again. And again. And again.

Brackley’s resurgence ran out of steam. In the heat of what Brown called a pressure cooker situation, Kidderminster managed the second half of the second half well before the hosts rallied late.

In the penultimate minute of stoppage time Pollock threaded the ball to Connor Hall, a second-half substitute for Aston Villa academy product Riccardo Calder. Hall hit the target but Christian Dibble got down smartly to keep it out.

“The absolute nads on these boys,” tweeted Kidderminster.

When it comes to character, Brackley must now find enough of it to smash through their ceiling and clamber into the fifth tier. Kidderminster went past them on their own turf with a seventh win in eight games and Scunthorpe – also beaten by Harriers – remain four points ahead.

The Saints will look at their remaining fixtures and quietly fancy themselves capable of a surprise tilt at the title, but thinking it and doing it are two completely different things.

The omens are good for Brackley off the pitch. St James Park was heaving and more than 1,300 of those in attendance were home supporters. Taken simplistically as a percentage of the town’s population, that’s an extremely healthy turnout for sixth-tier football.

We’re told football is too long and boring for the next generation but it simply isn’t true. Brackley Town attract young supporters, for landmark matches especially, and the composition of this Tuesday evening crowd didn’t suggest decline is inevitable.

On the pitch, Cowan and Brackley need to break the cycle. Another crack at the play-offs is their likeliest outcome and will cause more dread than excitement.

Last season’s play-off defeat against Boston United was Brackley’s second final loss on the spin. Either side of the pandemic, they’ve fallen short in the play-offs in each of the last five completed seasons.

History weighs heavy in football. This is a football club at risk of becoming numb to heartbreak, but which comes back one more go time after time. The unwelcome prospect of facing Kidderminster at home in a fixture of even more finality is coming into view.

They signed off in 2023/24 with three simple words: “We go again.”

It’s an overused and usually meaningless term, yet it seems woven into the fate of Brackley Town. Resilience is a virtue and regular matches of consequence season after season are no bad thing for the club’s attendances or its place in the town, but ‘nearly’ has to end some time.

Going again is the easy bit. For Brackley this season, going differently is what really counts.

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