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Football League Third Division South

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The Football League Third Division South was a level of English professional football which ran in parallel to Third Division North from 1921 to 1958.

The division was created in 1921 from the Third Division, formed one year earlier when the Football League absorbed the entire top division of the Southern League, effectively ending the ambitions of that league to rival the Football League. Before the creation of the Third Division, most of the Football League's clubs were from the industrial areas of the North and Midlands, with only 7 of its 44 members based in the South (Arsenal, Chelsea, Clapton Orient, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United, all from London, and Bristol City).

The following season, a Northern section was created, and the original division was renamed Third Division South. The exceptions to this were Crystal Palace, who were promoted to the Second Division, Grimsby Town who transferred to the Third Division North and and Abedare Athletic and Charlton Athletic who joined for the first time.


The division originally had 22 teams, expanding to 24 in 1950. Only one promotion place was available to the Second Division, meaning that many clubs spent long periods of time stuck in the division, and several were never promoted in the division's 31 seasons. At the end of each season, the bottom two clubs were put up for re-election, alongside the bottom two in the Northern section, although most survived the re-election vote.

In 1958, the North and South sections were merged together, to form a single Third Division and a new Fourth Division.

Founder Clubs of the Third Division (1920)

  1. Brentford
  2. Brighton & Hove Albion
  3. Bristol Rovers
  4. Crystal Palace
  5. Exeter City
  6. Gillingham
  7. Grimsby Town*
  8. Luton Town
  9. Merthyr Town
  10. Millwall
  11. Newport County
  12. Northampton Town
  13. Norwich City
  14. Plymouth Argyle
  15. Portsmouth
  16. Queens Park Rangers
  17. Reading
  18. Southampton
  19. Southend United
  20. Swansea Town
  21. Swindon Town
  22. Watford
  • Grimsby were relegated from the previous seasons Second Division
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