The Third Division South of The Football League was a tier in the English association football league system from 1921 to 1958. It ran in parallel with the Third Division North with clubs elected to the League or relegated from Division Two allocated to one or the other according to geographical position. Some clubs in the English Midlands shuttled between the Third Division South and the Third Division North according to the composition of the two leagues in any one season.
The division was created in 1921 from the Third Division, formed one year earlier when the Football League absorbed the leading clubs from the Southern League.
In 1921 a Northern section was created, and the original division was renamed Third Division South. The original 22 teams in the Third Division formed the new Third Division South, with the exceptions of Crystal Palace, who were promoted to the Second Division, Grimsby Town who were transferred to the Third Division North, and Aberdare Athletic and Charlton Athletic who joined The Football League for the first time. Several Midlands-based teams were included in the Third Division South from time to time, although most were geographically closer to their Northern division rivals; Nottingham Forest and Notts County played in the Southern division although nearby Derby County spent time in the Northern division.
The Football League Third Division was the third tier of the English football league system in 1920–21 and again from 1958 until 1992. With the formation of the FA Premier League the division become the fourth tier. In 2004 following the formation of the Football League Championship, the division league was renamed Football League Two.
Founder Clubs of the Third Division (1920)
Most of these clubs were drawn from what was then the top division of the 1919–20 Southern Football League, in an expansion of the Football League south of Birmingham. As Cardiff City was long considered a potential entrant for the Second Division due to their FA Cup exploits and Southern League dominance, they were sent directly into the Second Division and Grimsby Town, last place in the Second Division for 1919–20, were relegated.
The Third Division North of the Football League was a tier in the English association football league system from 1921 to 1958. It ran in parallel with the Third Division South with clubs elected to the League or relegated from a higher division allocated to one or the other according to geographical position. Some clubs in the English Midlands shuttled between the Third Division North and the Third Division South according to the composition of the two leagues in any one season.
The Third Division South had been formed in the 1920-21 season (as simply the Third Division) with 22 teams drawn mostly from the Southern League. It was decided that this gave the Football League as a whole too much of a southern bias, so the Third Division North was created in 1921-22 to redress the balance. Stockport County had finished bottom of the Second Division at the end of the 1920-21 season, and they were relegated into this new division, where they joined Grimsby Town who had spent a season in the Third Division after relegation from the Second Division in 1919-20. As there was no Northern equivalent of the Southern League, the remaining 18 teams came from several regional leagues: the Midland League, the Central League, the North Eastern League, the Lancashire Combination and the Birmingham Combination.