At the end of the season in the Premier Division, the top six teams enter the play-offs with the winner being crowned NCL champions.

This decayed into local district leagues usually only featuring teams from one or two towns with no input from the professional game.

For the 1989/90 season, the top flight was extended to 12 teams to include Lock Lane and Mayfield.

The ten inaugural members of the second division were: Saddleworth Rangers, Leigh East, British Aerospace, Barrow Island, Askam, Knottingley, Redhill, Dewsbury Celtic, Shaw Cross Sharks and East Leeds.

This expansion proved successful with Leigh East becoming the first non-founder members to win the league, in the 1990/91 season.

However, their initial plan to place the excluded teams in the Alliance (reserve grade) faced a legal challenge so they needed an alternative competition for them.

Other concessions included an increase in the BARLA representation in the Challenge Cup from two clubs to 64 and allowing the NCL champions to apply to replace the bottom team in the pro leagues.

The NCL soon expanded all divisions to 14 teams, though on occasions it has struggled to reach full complement of members, and lost all the remaining semi-pro clubs within three seasons.

[2][3] Initially, only three NCL teams joined National League Three (intended to bridge the gap between the pro and amateur games) but this changed in 2008 when the NCL downgraded the league's BARLA membership from full to associate.

From 2012 the Conference played in summer, as tier 3 of the new pyramid, and the initial season saw two former Rugby League Conference National Division clubs admitted (Dewsbury Celtic and Featherstone Lions) with others expected to join from 2013.