1-1 to 7-4: Every Scoreline in National League South History

A 1-1 draw rarely captures the imagination of the neutral. It can be seen as a frustrating afternoon with two points lost, a brilliant point gained away from home or against a side higher in the table, or a fair reflection of a closely fought contest by those involved.

However, it is the National League South’s most common scoreline across the first 22 seasons of the division’s existence since its formation in 2004/05. It occurred 1,123 times, accounting for 11.18% of all recorded matches in that period.

That’s more than one in every nine games ending with the sides sharing the points and the two goals, meaning at least one game per full matchweek is expected to end 1-1. It’s also the starting point for a look at every scoreline the division has produced from the league’s first match in 2004/05, then known as the Conference South, through to the conclusion of the 2025/26 season. That’s 10,047 officially recorded matches and 28,870 goals.

The data records 58 different scorelines in that time, with an average of 2.87 goals per match across the 10,000+ fixtures. Taken together, these results give a complete picture of National League South football, something that individual matches or seasons cannot provide, revealing which outcomes have become commonplace and which are genuine outliers.

Seven scorelines appear just once across the entire dataset, while some are yet to occur as of the end of 2025/26. Their rarity provides a distinct contrast with the familiar results that recur hundreds of times, creating a fascinating gap between the expected and more atypical scorelines.

This analysis looks only at regular-season fixtures where points are up for grabs, not play-off fixtures. It includes the incomplete 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons and only the official full-time score of each game.

Two fixtures in 2023/24, Slough Town vs Bath City and Weymouth vs Yeovil Town, were abandoned and awarded to the side in front at the time. However, as no goals were added to the teams’ totals, those fixtures are excluded from the dataset.

This piece explores the frequency of different scorelines, the anomalies and rare scores, clean sheets and both teams scoring, winning margins, scorelines and goals by season, and plenty more to dive into the results that have defined the National League South since 2004/05.

The Most Common Scorelines

A 1-1 draw may be the National League South’s most familiar result, but narrow victories are close behind. A 1-0 home win occurred 879 times across the 22 seasons, just six more than the 873 occasions on which a home side won 2-1. The same scores, but with the away sides winning, follow next, with 0-1 recorded 796 times and 1-2 on 776 occasions.

Together, these four winning scorelines account for 3,324 matches. Add in the 1-1 draw and the five most common results total 4,447 games, or 44.26% of the dataset, meaning one in every 2.26 recorded matches ended in one of just five ways.

The concentration continues when looking down the top ten rankings. A 2-0 home win was recorded 632 times, followed by the 0-0 draw (589) and the 2-2 draw (556). A 0-2 away win appeared 474 times, while 3-1 home victories complete the top ten with 454 occurrences.

Put together, the ten most common scorelines account for 7,152 matches, or 71.19% of all games. Although 58 different scorelines appear in the data, more than seven in ten matches ended with one of the ten most common outcomes.

The overall result split adds more context. Home sides won 4,293 matches (42.73%), compared with 3,370 away wins (33.54%), while 2,384 matches (23.73%) ended in draws. This amounts to 923 more home wins than away wins, and draws accounted for almost a quarter of all matches.

There have been 29 different combinations of home wins, ranging from 1-0 to 8-2, and 23 different away-winning scorelines, ranging from 0-1 to 2-8. No team has ever lost a National League South match after scoring five goals.

The six draw combinations round off the dataset, ranging from 0-0 to the solitary 5-5 draw recorded so far. However, 0-0, 1-1 and 2-2 account for 2,268 draws, meaning that 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5 have occurred just 116 times combined, representing 4.87% of all drawn matches between 2004/05 and the end of 2025/26.

These figures highlight the prominence of narrow victories and low-scoring draws, while also illustrating the rarity of extreme scorelines, which will be explored in greater detail next.

The Rarest Scorelines

It seems pretty remarkable that, in over 10,000 matches spanning 22 years, seven scorelines have appeared just once. They range from a seven-goal away win to a 5-5 draw, showing how differently a match can unfold compared with the division’s familiar outcomes.

Two unique matches share the dataset’s highest total of 11 goals in a game. On 11 September 2004, Bognor Regis Town beat Welling United 6-5. It was 3-3 at the break, and the hosts fought back from 3-5 down to secure an incredible win, with Luke Nightingale netting a hat-trick.

More than a decade later, on 17 February 2015, Bath City defeated Farnborough 7-4 to become only the second 11-goal game in the league’s history. Farnborough opened the scoring but went into the break 5-1 down, eventually scoring three times late on to make the scoreline somewhat less damaging. Nick McCootie scored four times for the Romans at Twerton Park.

Truro City’s 8-2 win over Farnborough Town on 25 October 2011 is also a unique scoreline, made even more remarkable by the fact that the Cornish side went into half-time 7-1 up, a scoreline that has only occurred six times in itself. Teams have netted eight goals on just nine occasions in over 10,000 matches, but this scoreline is unique, with 8-0 appearing four times, 8-1 twice, and the reverse scoreline, 2-8, appearing twice as well. Remarkably, Farnborough won the reverse fixture 2-1!

Another unique ten-goal game was Worthing’s 6-4 victory over Dover Athletic on 10 February 2024. This result has not yet occurred in reverse, and although they ended up on the losing side, Dover repeatedly hit back with goals to make it 2-1, 3-2 and 6-4 from 6-2 down. The headline goes to Ollie Pearce, who scored four for the home side.

High scores do not always produce a winner. On 30 January 2016, Hemel Hempstead Town and Weston-super-Mare played out a thrilling 5-5 draw at Vauxhall Road. Hemel led 3-0 before the visitors fought back to 4-4, and Weston scored an 88th-minute equaliser to earn a dramatic point and conclude the division’s only 5-5 draw to date.

The largest away winning margin came much earlier and remains a unique scoreline. On 23 October 2004, Grays Athletic won 0-7 away to Dorchester Town en route to becoming the league’s first champions. The result remains unique, though the reverse scoreline has occurred seven times. The unpredictability of the division was showcased in the return fixture in March 2005, as Dorchester secured a 2-2 draw away from home despite the thrashing at The Avenue Stadium.

The most recent one-off result came on 25 November 2024, when Dorking Wanderers won 1-7 away at Hemel Hempstead Town. The reverse scoreline in favour of home teams has happened six times, and not many would have seen this outcome coming when Dorking went into half-time a single goal to the good. The second-half thrashing cements this as a unique result, making it one of just seven occasions on which a side has netted seven away goals.

Ten other scorelines have happened five times or fewer, but more than once. They are 8-1, 7-3 and 2-8 (twice); 4-5 and 2-7 (three times); 8-0, 6-3 and 3-6 (four times); and 5-4 and 1-6 (five times).

It shows that, no matter how common certain scorelines are or how football ‘should’ play out, certain matches defy all statistics and stand out as the most entertaining and unique scorelines this league has thrown up.

Clean Sheets, Goalless Matches and Both Teams Scoring

Both teams scored in 5,587 of the 10,047 games in the dataset, representing 55.61% of the total. In the remaining 4,460 games, at least one side failed to find the net.

Goalless draws accounted for 589 matches, or 5.86% of the dataset, roughly one in every 17 games or one in every two gameweeks. However, 0-0 draws only tell part of the story, as clean sheets also feature in victories to nil.

The home and away clean sheet figures reveal an expected difference. Home teams failed to score in 2,301 matches in the dataset (22.90%), while away sides drew a blank on 2,748 occasions (27.35%), meaning home sides recorded 447 more clean sheets than away sides in the sample.

The most goals in a game where a team failed to score is eight, with 8-0 home wins occurring four times in the data. The first came on 8 September 2012, when Maidenhead United hit Truro City for eight at York Road. Four and a half years later, Ebbsfleet United repeated the feat against Bishop’s Stortford in March 2017.

There are two examples from the current decade too, with Dorking Wanderers’ 8-0 demolition of Havant & Waterlooville on Boxing Day 2021 and Maidstone United beating Enfield Town by the same scoreline last season, on 24 February 2026.

Ultimately, both teams scored more often than not, but clean sheets remained a regular feature of the division’s history. The 0-0 draw is the seventh most common scoreline across all matches, while games in which at least one side failed to score totalled 4,460, or 44.39% of all matches in the dataset.

From Narrow Wins to Goal-Fests

Across the 10,047 National League South matches explored in this piece, the most common winning margin was one goal. A total of 3,972 games, or 39.53% of all fixtures, were decided by the narrowest possible advantage. Excluding draws, one-goal victories accounted for 51.83% of matches that produced a winner.

Two-goal margins were the next most common, occurring 2,061 times, or 20.51% of all matches. A further 1,008 games were decided by three goals, while four-goal margins occurred 407 times. Only 215 matches, or 2.14% of all games, ended with a winning margin of five or more goals. These figures outline how frequently matches were decided by fine margins, although winning margins alone do not tell the whole story: a 6-5 and a 1-0 have the same margin of victory but were very different contests.

Looking at the total number of goals scored, three was the most common match total, recorded 2,285 times, narrowly ahead of two goals, which occurred in 2,229 games, a difference of just 56 matches. One goal (1,675) and four goals (1,598) followed, while five-goal games (967) outnumbered goalless draws, of which there were 589.

Beyond five goals, match totals became progressively less common. Six-goal games occurred 426 times, followed by 173 matches with seven goals and 105 with eight or more. Across the dataset, 704 matches featured at least six goals, accounting for 7.01% of all fixtures. Only nine games produced ten or more goals, making double-digit totals a rarity, occurring approximately once in every 1,116 matches.

The highest-scoring games in the dataset were the two 11-goal encounters: Bognor Regis Town’s 6-5 victory over Welling United and Bath City’s 7-4 win against Farnborough. Despite their extraordinary totals, neither was a completely one-sided contest, illustrating how a goal-fest does not necessarily mean a heavy defeat for one side.

High-scoring matches did not always produce a winner, either. The dataset contained 672 draws featuring at least four goals, equivalent to 28.19% of all drawn matches. Hemel Hempstead’s 5-5 draw with Weston-super-Mare in 2016 was an extreme example, with neither side able to secure all three points.

Ultimately, the figures show a typical football division where narrow victories and relatively modest goal totals have been the norm, while heavy defeats and extraordinary goal-fests remain the exception. The scorelines may occasionally be spectacular, but across more than 10,000 matches, the National League South has most often been decided by very fine margins.

How Scoring Has Changed Across 22 Seasons

The National League South has averaged 2.87 goals per game across the 22 seasons from 2004/05 to 2025/26. However, that overall figure conceals considerable variation between seasons, with some producing far more goals per game than others.

The highest-scoring season by average was 2016/17, when 462 matches produced 1,442 goals at an average of 3.12 goals per game. The season with the fewest goals per game was 2008/09, when the same number of games yielded 1,218 goals, averaging 2.64 goals per match. This was a difference of 0.48 goals per game, or almost one extra goal every two matches.

2016/17 also saw the highest rate of matches with six or more goals, with 51 matches, or 11.04% of the season’s fixtures, seeing six or more goals scored. In 2008/09, that happened just 22 times, or 4.76% of the season’s matches. The latter campaign also had the lowest rate of matches featuring goals from both teams, at 48.48%, meaning fewer than half of the 462 fixtures saw both sides score.

The highest average was not the only notable seasonal record. In 2012/13, 3.05 goals were scored per game, the second-highest average in the dataset, but just 15 of 462 games (3.25%) ended 0-0, the lowest proportion in the dataset. Unsurprisingly, that season also recorded the highest both-teams-scored rate, at 60.39%. The 2007/08 season had the highest 0-0 rate in the dataset, when 36 of the 462 matches finished goalless, accounting for 7.79% of games.

The only other season to average more than three goals per game was the league’s maiden season in 2004/05, which recorded an average of 3.04 goals per game. The next highest was the incomplete 2020/21 season, which was played behind closed doors, with an average of 2.96 goals per game.

Interestingly, this season was the only one in the dataset to have a higher away-win percentage (40.61%) and more goals scored by away teams than home teams (241 at home, 248 away), sparking a separate debate about the impact of supporters and attendance on fixtures. However, as this season was not completed, with just 165 matches recorded, its figures should be interpreted with caution.

The most recent campaign saw the most goals in any season to date, with 1,577 goals scored in 552 matches. However, the average goals per game fell fractionally below the overall average, coming in at 2.86 goals per game, well short of the 3.12 recorded in 2016/17. This reinforces how the number of teams and fixtures can affect these figures.

As mentioned earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic also affected the number of matches played in two seasons of National League South football. In 2019/20, 368 of the 462 scheduled matches were completed, producing 1,061 goals at an average of 2.88 per game. The aforementioned 2020/21 season saw 489 goals in 165 matches.

The seasonal data makes for interesting viewing when looking exclusively at goalscoring and the scarcity of certain scorelines, but there is no clear pattern in whether more or fewer goals have been scored over time. Instead, variation between campaigns is visible. While the long-term average of 2.87 goals per match provides a useful benchmark, it does not describe every campaign equally well. The differences between seasons show why the division’s scoring history is best understood through several measures rather than a single headline figure.

The Current Season

The current 2026/27 season is well underway, but it is not included in this dataset to maintain a fixed sample for researching this article. However, this section provides a snapshot of the data as of Wednesday, 21 October 2026, and considers where this season might sit within the overall figures.

So far, 136 fixtures have produced 388 goals, at an average of 2.85 goals per game. This figure sits just below the overall average, and should the season continue at the same rate, it would sit joint-13th with 2005/06 and 2023/24. The former season saw 462 fixtures played while the latter had 550 official scorelines recorded, meaning they’ll both be short of the 552 scheduled fixtures for 2026/27. However, it really is too early to make any concrete predictions at this stage.

Twenty-seven different scorelines have already been recorded this season, with the 1-1 draw leading the way, occurring 19 times to date and following the overall pattern as the most common scoreline. The highest number of goals in a game currently stands at eight, with two 5-3 home wins against Slough Town, who lost away to both Dover Athletic and Hampton & Richmond Borough.

Six scorelines have occurred just once so far this season: 4-1, 4-0, 0-5, 4-3, 6-1 and 2-4. Billericay Town are responsible for two of these, with their 4-0 win over Farnborough and 2-4 win at Farnham being the only occasions on which those scorelines have appeared this season.

The two five-goal winning margins are the biggest of the season, while the scorelines themselves have occurred only once each so far in 2026/27. Chelmsford City’s 0-5 win away to Chesham United was the 50th time the scoreline had appeared in National League South history, moving it to within three occurrences of the 4-3 scoreline in 25th place. That scoreline was seen this season when Dorking Wanderers beat Braintree Town.

Ebbsfleet United’s 6-1 win over Weston-super-Mare is by far the rarest scoreline of the season, having occurred just 17 times in the league’s history. That moves 6-1 into joint-32nd place alongside 2-5, overtaking the 4-4 draw, which remains on 16 occurrences.

While there is still so much of the season to go and many more scoreline stories to be written, this initial snapshot of the first two and a half months of the season makes for interesting reading when compared with the overall dataset.

Conclusion

Across its 22-year history, the National League South has thrown up a plethora of familiar results, but also some remarkable scorelines that are unlikely to be forgotten by those who witnessed them, whether as supporters, players, managers, volunteers or officials. While the 1-1 draw sits comfortably at the top as the division’s most common outcome, the seven scorelines recorded just once show that there is still plenty of room for the unexpected.

The seasonal figures also show that goalscoring varies from season to season, with some campaigns producing far more goals per game than others. Although the overall numbers reveal some clear patterns, individual matches continue to provide exceptions to the rule.

There are also plenty of milestones still waiting to be reached. Who will be the first team to score nine goals in a game? Will a side ever reach double figures in 90 minutes? Will we see the first-ever 12-goal game? What will be the next scoreline to join the 58 already recorded? Perhaps it will be 1-8, 3-7, 9-0, 0-8, 4-6, or maybe something even crazier.

The thrilling thing is that any of these could happen this weekend, later in the season, or perhaps not for another 22 years. For now, though, the record stands as it is. Familiar results will continue to be a staple of weekends and midweek fixtures, while rarer scorelines serve as reminders of just how much variation there can be across more than 10,000 matches. With season 23 well underway, the next unusual result could be just around the corner.