league below the Bundesliga was made at the annual convention of the German Football Association, the DFB, in Frankfurt on 30 June 1973. The league replaced the five Regionalligas that were at this level from 1963 to 1974. Each Regionalliga had a set quota of clubs that could qualify for the new league with the Regionalliga Süd receiving thirteen spots, the Regionalliga West twelve, the Regionalliga Nord and Regionalliga Südwest seven and the Regionalliga Berlin one. The qualified teams were established through a ranking that took the last five seasons of the Regionalliga into account. The new 2. Bundesliga was split into a northern and a southern division with 20 clubs each. Each division had its champion directly promoted to the Bundesliga while the two runners-up would contest a two-leg play-off to determine the third promoted team. The bottom four clubs in each league were relegated, however, as the number of clubs relegated from the Bundesliga to each division could vary, so could the number of clubs in the league and therefore the number of teams relegated. 2. Bundesliga North and South 1974 to 1981 The first-ever game of the league was played on Friday, 2 August 1974 between 1. FC Saarbrücken and Darmstadt 98 and ended in a 1–0 win for Saarbrücken, with Nikolaus Semlitsch scoring the first-ever goal of the new league in the 18th minute of the game. The inaugural champions of the league were Hannover 96 in the north and Karlsruher SC in the south, both former Bundesliga clubs. The play-offs for the third Bundesliga spot were contested by FK Pirmasens and Bayer Uerdingen, with Uerdingen winning 6–0 at home after a four-all draw in the first leg. The three promoted teams however proved uncompetitive in the Bundesliga with Hannover and Uerdingen being relegated straight away again while Karlsruhe lasted for only two seasons. The second season saw league championships for Tennis Borussia Berlin and 1. FC Saarbrücken, with Tennis Borussia lasting for only one season and 1. FCS for two. The contest for the third promotion spot pitted two far bigger names of German football against each other, with Borussia Dortmund edging out 1. FC Nürnberg with two wins, ending Dortmund's four-year second division spell. The last round of the season in the south also saw an all-time goal scoring record per round when 55 goals were scored in ten games. The northern division incidentally