| Founded | 1906 |
|---|---|
| First season | 1906–07 |
| Folded | 1964 |
| Country | England |
| Last champions | Horden Colliery Welfare A.F.C. (2nd title) |
| Most championships | Middlesbrough reserves (12 titles) |
The North Eastern League was an association football league for teams in the North East of England.
A sports league is a group of sports teams that compete against each other in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete on weekends; at its most complex, it can be an international professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players.
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The league was founded in 1906 and was initially successful, with teams defecting from the rival Northern Football Alliance to play. Although some members (such as Darlington) transferred to join the Football League Third Division North in 1921, the North Eastern League absorbed the Northern Alliance in 1925–26 and split into two divisions. The league spent nine years like this, returning to one division in 1935; clubs from the second division re-forming the Northern Football Alliance, which became a feeder to it.
The Northern Football Alliance is a football competition based in the Northeast of England and Cumbria. It has three divisions headed by the Premier Division, which sits at step 7 of the National League System. Under a sponsorship agreement it is billed as the Newcastle Building Society Northern Football Alliance.
Darlington Football Club is an English football club based in Darlington, County Durham. They are members of the National League North, the sixth tier of English football, and play at Blackwell Meadows.
The Third Division North of the Football League was a tier in the English 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.
As years progressed, numbers dwindled and the league initially folded in 1958 after the withdrawal of Football League clubs' reserve sides. The remaining members initially transferred to the Midland Football League before founding the Northern Counties League in 1960. The Northern Counties League was renamed the North Eastern League in 1962–63 but folded for a second time in 1964.
The Midland Football League was a semi-professional football league in England. It acted as a feeder league to the Football League for many years before merging with the Yorkshire League in 1982 to form the Northern Counties East League.
