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. In recent years the English football league system has favored playoffs instead of test matches, with the requisite number of bottom teams in the higher league (from one to four) automatically relegated to make room for the teams promoted thanks to placement or playoff victory, rather than giving the higher-league teams the opportunity to save their league position in a test match.
The best-known league in the English-speaking world that uses the test match system plays a different code of football, specifically rugby union. The National Provincial Championship (NPC), the domestic rugby competition in New Zealand, uses this system to determine which teams may move between its top two divisions. 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).