(FM24) Born & Bred ‘The Regionnaire Challenge’- Prologue

The Football Manager Regional Challenge…

First, I have to say it’s not a challenge that I have come up with but it was MaddFM. He came up the idea on FM22, when he took over The Toon Army, pre-Saudi owned and turned them into a North-East only side. To be known as ‘The Football Manager Regional Challenge’ (England) aka “The Regionnaire Save”. What it is that you take a club of your choice and implement the regional/local squad and transfer policy, meaning you can only sign players that were born/raised within that region where the club is located. So, all players and staff had to be born and in the North-East of England. Basically the same as the well-known Athletic Club de Bilbao setup in Northern Spain where only players with Basque nationality are permitted to sign and play for the club. There is more information on The Football Manager Regional Challenge over on his webpage regarding this challenge.

The concept evolved slightly (again, by MaddFM) for his AC Milan save, where as well as players born within 50km of the San Siro being eligible, players who came through the academy at clubs within this catchment area were also eligible. What this does is alleviate an issue in FM where a lot of academy players in nations which are less well researched are given ‘Unknown’ for a place of birth.

‘Born & Bred’…

Ever since I read the first blog of Northern Boys the thought of doing a Regionnaire save has appealed to me, but at the time I held off as I wanted to do it with a lower league side.  As someone who has played FM for 15+ years, and often plays the same way, it seemed a great way to freshen things up.

There was West Midlands region filter available, which I took as a baseline as that were not all places on there. However, It didn’t take me long to updated and now there is up to 70-ish places of Birth on it. Before, starting any news series/challenge I did run two tests with the player search tab. The first test was with Man City and the second test with the non-league club in tier 11, I am going to play as. The Premier club had over 1300 players and Gornal Athletic returned over 200 players. This is likely due to scouting and probably a lot more players would like to play at the Emptihad instead of the Garden Walk Stadium. But still 200 players is still a good number to start with. As for staff, I will just bring in who I can at the moment but will try and stick to that part of the challenge at a later date. The list below is the places of birth in the West Midlands area. However, I have noticed I may have to drop the Newport in the West Midlands as it might throw up the Welsh Newport instead.

All updates on this series will be posted on my WordPress, on the Sports Interactive Community page & in the FM Library Discord channel…

The Club…

Gornal Athletic FC, a tier 11 non-league, who in fact are the closet non-league football club to my doorstep, only being 1.5 miles away. The football club are based in Lower Gornal, Dudley, in the West Midlands, England. They are currently members of the West Midlands (Regional) League Division One and play at the Garden Walk Stadium.

The club were established in 1945 under the name Lower Gornal Athletic and joined the Worcestershire Combination. They finished bottom of the league back in 1954–55 season. In 1963, the club transferred to the West Midlands (Regional) League, although their reserve team at the time remained in Division Two of the Worcestershire Combination. When the West Midlands (Regional) League gained a second division in 1965 and the club became members of the Premier Division.

In 1972, the club were renamed Gornal Athletic. Although they finished bottom of the Premier Division in 1978–79 season, they avoided being relegated. However, the 1979–80 season saw them finish second-from-bottom of the division, resulting in relegation to Division One. The club were Division One runners-up in 1983–84 season, and after finishing as runners-up again in 1993–94, they were promoted back to the Premier Division.

Gornal Athletic finished bottom of the Premier Division in 2002–03 season and were relegated to Division One South. However, they won that division at the first attempt, earning an immediate promotion back to the Premier Division. They went on to finish second in the Premier Division in 2005–06 season. The club were Premier Division champions in 2011–12 season and were promoted to the Midland Alliance. However, they were relegated back to the West Midlands (Regional) League Premier Division at the end of the 2013–14 season. In 2016–17 season, they finished bottom of the Premier Division and were relegated to Division One.

In the 2019-20 season was abandoned and we all know why…

Last time I went down to the Garden Walk was not to watch ‘The Peacocks’ play it was a club called Black Country Rangers who at the time shared the ground with them in the 2018-19 season. I did manage that club on FM18 and I saw them beat Pershore 6-1 that day and also got a cheeky signed shirt from the club too. I actually went on the play two or three games for their over 35 Sunday league team before COVID messed up our lives for a short while.

CoxieFM Signs…

I have arrived at The Garden Walk Stadium for the first time as the new Peacocks manager and the board only give me a one year deal. Hopefully I can earn a new contract midseason or otherwise this will be a quick save, lol…I start the series off with No badges and Sunday league footballing experience. The media predicts us to finish 3rd and our fierce rivals are Dudley Town.

The challenge starts now as that I have 60 days before the season starts, that’s excluding preseason fixtures and have no players in our squads and below is my starting squad. I have brought in 23 players which stays in the rules of the challenge, so now bring on preseason…

Name	Age	Position	Place of Birth	Club Started at
Joe Brown	23	DEF	Nuneaton	Nuneaton Boro
Jamie Chisholm	22	DEF	Birmingham	Mansfield Town
Rhys Thompson	30	DEF	Stoke-on-Trent	Leek
Jayden Allamby-John	20	MID	Birmingham	Walsall
Regan Upton	26	DEF	Burton-upon-Trent	Burton Albion
Lewys McCafferty	18	DEF	Coventry	Coventry City
Seb Thompson	20	MID	Worcester	Liverpool
Charlie Manners	18	FOR	Solihull	Coventry
Will Byers	23	DEF	Stafford	Stone OA
Aidan Jeynes	22	GK	Birmingham	Tamworth
Matt Coton	29	GK	Sutton Coldfield	Aston Villa
James Harrison	23	FOR	Burton-upon-Trent	Burton Albion
Owen Bennett	21	DEF	Birmingham	Aston Villa
Lewis Hayden	29	MID	Solihull	Solihull Moors
Riley Davoile	22	DEF	Coventry	Gresley
Harry Jackson	21	FOR	Nuneaton	Nuneaton Boro
Jamie Smith	27	DEF	Worcester	Worcester City
Ryan Grosvenor	21	MID	Wolverhampton	Shrewsbury Town
Sufyan Zia	25	DEF	Birmingham	Bilston Town
Lewis Redding	21	MID	Shrewsbury	Shrewsbury Town
Ben Stokes	25	MID	Coventry	Tamworth
Devon King	19	FOR	Nuneaton	Nuneaton Boro
Shilo Waldo	19	MID	Birmingham	West Brom

Final Words…

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