Stalybridge Celtic of the Conference North have examined their finances and decided that promotion would be financial suicide.
"We said to Jim Harvey, the manager, to get us promoted in three years," said chairman Rob Gorski. "The bugger nearly did it in two. And that just won't do. We have a three year plan, and doing it in two is just madness!"
According to Gorski, the board have asked Harvey to ensure that they don't get promoted this season.
"At the start of December," said Gorski, "we'd won every game except for a couple of draws, and looked likely to catch Hyde at the top of the league, overtake them and get automatic promotion."
The Celtic board looked at the table and realised that they were so far ahead of third place, the only way they could avoid promotion would be to not win another game until the end of the season.
"It was a difficult pill to swallow," said Gorski. "Fair play to the lads, they understood the situation, and they've gone to their new task of not getting promoted with gusto."
That task was made difficult at the start of 2012.
"We had to lose to our two local rivals," said Gorski. "That was hard. It was even harder to not beat Hinckley. We accidentally scored four in the first half. We didn't mean to. They were just woeful. So we had to let them score, and that was hard, they kept missing open goals. They nearly missed the one our keeper placed on the goal line and walked away from. It was easier to lose to Colwyn Bay, because they at least tried to score. We put a hole in the wall you could have walked a brass band through, and bless, the guy curled it into the top corner."
Celtic's next loss is scheduled for Altrincham.
"Alty have figured out what we're up to," said Gorski. "They've said they're going to spill the beans unless we let Damien Reeves score a double hat-trick. I've figured that's okay, as they'll probably mark him down for one even if he forgets to turn up."
