Test match (football)
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A test match in football is a match played at the end of a season between a team that has done badly in a higher league and one that has done well in a lower league of the same football league system. The winner of the test match plays in the higher league the following year, and the loser in the lower league.
When the Football League was first expanded to two divisions in 1893, test matches were employed to decide relegation and promotion between them, but the practice was scrapped in favour of automatic relegation and promotion in 1899. In recent years the League has favoured playoffs instead of test matches: The requisite number of teams at the bottom of the higher league are automatically relegated; the same number of teams, less one, are promoted automatically from the lower division, with the final promotion place going to one team from the following four, after semi-final and final playoff matches. For example, the bottom three in the Premiership are automatically relegated, the top two in the Championship are promoted, while the teams in third, fourth, fifth and sixth enter the playoffs.
In 2004, Italy's football (soccer) league used a two-legged test match to determine one spot in the top level of its system, Serie A. Some leagues in continental Europe combine automatic promotion/relegation with test matches. For example, in the Netherlands, only one club is automatically relegated from its top level, the Eredivisie, each season. The next two lower-placed teams enter a promotion/relegation mini-league with high-placed teams from the Dutch First Division (although not the winner, which earns automatic promotion).
J.League in Japan uses a test match between the third-from-bottom team in J1 and third-place team in J2 (see J. League Promotion/Relegation Series).
[edit] Test matches in rugby union
Test matches are also used in rugby union. The National Provincial Championship (NPC), the former domestic rugby competition in New Zealand, long used this system to determine which teams could potentially move between its top two divisions. However, with the 2006 reorganisation of the competition into the fully professional Air New Zealand Cup and the nominally amateur Heartland Championship, this system has been abandoned.
In 2007, South Africa initially planned to introduce a test match related to the Super 14, a competition between regional teams from that country, New Zealand and Australia. Through 2005, the competition was known as the Super 12. After that season, the competition was expanded to 14 teams, with South Africa receiving a fifth team to go along with the four it had in the Super 12. However, due to considerable political wrangling within South African rugby, the country added two new franchises instead of one—but the competition rules only allow five South African sides to play in the Super 14 each year. The country's rugby federation decided to guarantee four South African teams places in the following year's Super 14, with the fifth having to play a test match with the franchise currently outside the competition. However, after considerable protest from the established teams, concerns about the competitiveness and financial stability of the Southern Spears, one of the two new teams, and a change in leadership of the federation, the test match system was scrapped. In August 2006, the Spears challenged the decision in court, and won the initial round of the court battle, restoring the test match system for the time being. While appeals were in progress, the federation and the Spears reached a settlement in which the Spears abandoned their plans to enter Super Rugby for the foreseeable future, making the proposed test match system moot.
These test matches should not be confused with international rugby union matches, which are also known as Test matches.
