The football pyramid system was introduced with the best of intentions.

For decades, non-League clubs had bashed their heads against the glass sealing beneath the professional game.

The re-election process, where the rest of the old Division Four voted for whether the bottom club should stay put, was a farce.

Too often it boiled down to the quality of plonk on offer in the boardroom, rather than the genuine merits or otherwise of keeping a poor side in the division.

The change to automatic promotion and relegation got rid of all that. The worst club went down; end of.

Suddenly the pipe-dream was alive to take the smallest side up through the divisions. Teams way down the non-League scale could fantasise at the prospect of one day lining up against ‘real’ opposition.

And some – to coin that dreaded phrase uttered by Peter Ridsdale at Elland Road – lived that dream. Nobody did that more than Farsley Celtic.

Three years ago, I was lucky enough to witness their crowning glory.

A 4-3 win over Hinckley United at Burton’s Pirelli Stadium – typically clinched in the most dramatic fashion – lifted the Celts into the Conference; just one step off the Football League itself.

For the former UniBond First Division club, with an average crowd at the time of under 400, life could not get any better.

Of course, as with all dreams, you have to wake up. Relegation immediately followed after a late-season collapse. And then, more significantly, financial distress.

The Celts paid the ultimate price for reaching for the stars. This week the club folded.

Ironically, Hinckley would have been the visitors to Throstle Nest this afternoon.

A reformed Farsley team may start again back down at the bottom. But for the minnows that rose up to bloody the noses of the likes of Torquay and Cambridge, this is the end of the road.

The scars of trying to chase that dream are everywhere in our domestic game.

Chester City have brought 126 years of history to an abrupt halt after being kicked out of the Conference. Further up, Southend, Cardiff and Premier League Portsmouth continue to battle for survival.

They are the headline clubs. There are others, too many others, struggling to cling on against the tide.

You wonder how someone like Accrington, a reformed club already, keep going. Stanley are enjoying a fantastic season – and were worthy winners over City last month – but they still play to gates barely reaching 1,300. It simply doesn’t add up.

How long can clubs like that keep punching above their weight?

A return to the dark ages of re-election is not the answer. If you remove the incentive to better yourself, you lose that competitive edge.

What is the goal for the sides pushing at the top of the Conference if they know there will be no promotion come what may?

But in the same way that Leeds and Portsmouth overspent in pursuit of top-flight success, fair competition comes at a hefty price.

The temptation will always be there to spend what you don’t have in trying to achieve the seemingly unachievable.

Others, like Farsley, are swept along by the euphoria until they are too far gone and promoted beyond their means.

Then it becomes impossible to turn the clock back. And this week it stopped ticking altogether.