over the next several seasons. The experienced players who had helped achieve the title retired or left the team, and the youngsters who replaced them could not match their talent. The downward spiral reached a low with relegation to the Belgian Second Division in 1936. Cercle took the opportunity to make sweeping changes, appointing a new coach and board. The changes proved successful, and Cercle won promotion back to the highest division after only two years. World War II in Belgium (1939–1945) The Second World War made a regular football competition impossible in 1939. Cercle therefore took part in regional championships, in which each team met another multiple times. Cercle, though, had comparatively little competition in its native West Flanders, and lost contact with the high standards maintained in the stronger Antwerp and Brussels regional championships. A national contest resumed in 1941; Cercle finished the season last but one in the league. Usually this would have meant relegation, but the KBVB ruled that the circumstances of the war, which limited training opportunities and youth development, meant no team should be relegated. Cercle were made to play one match behind closed doors during the 1943 season, after an incident during a game against Anderlecht. Supporters, furious with referee De Braeckel's decisions to annul two Cercle goals for unclear reasons and to award Anderlecht a goal that looked offside, chased De Braeckel from the stadium. Two Cercle fans proposed to the Cercle Brugge board that they give the referee a ride to the Bruges railway station; the board accepted, but the fans instead drove the referee toward Zedelgem, where they threw him from the car in the middle of nowhere. Immediately after liberation in 1944, an unofficial championship was organised among the teams who had in 1939 made up the top division. Most teams, though, were unable to participate, and the Von Rundstedt Offensive spelled the end of the initiative. The end ranking of this competition has not even been archived by the Belgian football association. Second decline and return (1945–1961) Cercle could not avoid relegation in the first season after the war and, despite being favorites for promotion the following season, struggled to compete in the lower league, finishing their first season there in seventh place. The next four seasons brought more mediocre league positions, until in 1951 the KBVB revealed plans to create a new second division. Clubs in the