lose fans as well as gain them. If formed way back, “Bristol United" would probably have fared better than either [Bristolian clubs] City or Rovers have done independently, but there is too much history and animosity to merge now.". "Alternatively", Chester also added, "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." Closely fitting this description, 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; it was called the Football Conference from 1986 to 2015, when it became the National League. Since the 1986–87 season, the champions of this league have received promotion to the Football League, with the League's bottom club being relegated 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 Football 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. Any club in the English football pyramid (which also includes some clubs from Wales) can potentially win enough promotions to reach the Football League or the Premier League, the separate top division formed in 1992. Precursors in Scottish and English football 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.