Meet the Hosts

Mike McCaffrey

Founder · Host · Editor

Mike started The SNLF and still does most of the jobs nobody sees. He hosts the show live every Wednesday at 8pm, presents the podcast, and edits Dugout News.

He also presents Dugout Diaries, the long-form strand — one guest, one conversation, no panel. Managers, players and the people who run the leagues get the time to say what they actually think, which is not something Sussex non-league gets offered very often.

And he is the boss. Dugout AI Ltd is his — The SNLF, the IBB10 Show, Dugout News and everything else that carries the badge. Nobody else signs it off, and nobody else carries it when it goes wrong.

The thread through all of it is the same one the site is built on: Sussex non-league deserves to be covered properly, by people who actually stand on the terraces, rather than as an afterthought at the bottom of somebody else’s sports page.

He is an award-winning podcaster. The SNLF has a Non League Bible award to show for it, and the IBB10 Show was named Best Non-League Podcast 2026 by The Non League Bible.

Matthew Rogers

Host · National League South

Matthew covers the top of the Sussex pyramid, and Horsham in particular — he has been watching the Hornets’ rise week by week and writing it up as it happens.

He is the Dugout News National League South columnist. His Issue 3 piece asked the question everyone at Step 2 is asking about Horsham: genuine playoff contenders, or a flash in the pan?

He also files the SCFL Division One round-ups — the division nobody else bothers with, covered properly.

Away from the show he runs Non-League Southern News (@nonleaguesouths), covering non-league across the south. He is on X at @MatthewORogers.

Grant Hearn

Host · The Manager’s View

Grant is the one on the panel who has actually done it. He took Forest Row up into the SCFL Premier Division through the play-offs, then managed at East Grinstead Town — so when the rest of us are picking over what a manager should have done on Saturday, there is someone in the room who has stood in that technical area with a squad to pick and no money to fix it.

He is out of the dugout now and behind a microphone instead, which is the show’s gain.

One of the four voices on The SNLF Show every Wednesday night.

Gareth Spinks

Co-founder · Host · SNLF Food Guy

Gareth is one of the co-founders of The SNLF: a coffee obsessive, a non-league football tragic and, somewhat unexpectedly, the resident SNLF food guy.

By day he is Operations Manager at Naked Barista, an independent speciality coffee company based in Littlehampton, working across operations and wholesale and generally trying to convince people that life is far too short for bad coffee.

As if one coffee job were not enough, he is also owner and founder of AM Coffee Co alongside his wife, Chelsea. The business is named after their two children, Archie and Mollie, and can be found serving coffee at events across the area. AM Coffee Co is available for private bookings through Instagram at @am_coffeeco.

He also takes AM Coffee out to clubs on matchdays at no cost and no risk to them — he turns up, sells it, and hands the club 15% of whatever he takes.

Away from coffee, Gareth can normally be found somewhere around the Sussex non-league pyramid, watching football in conditions that would make a sensible person stay at home. Alongside Mike, Grant and Matt he helps cover the clubs, characters, stories and occasional absolute nonsense that make Sussex non-league football so good.

He has also built a bit of a reputation for reviewing burgers at football grounds, which led to the Bun-desliga: a highly serious, completely unofficial ranking of non-league burgers, treated with exactly the level of importance you would expect from a man judging cheeseburgers next to a football pitch. A ground can have a terrible pitch, questionable defending and plumbing from the 1970s — serve a top-tier burger and all will probably be forgiven.

Most importantly he is husband to Chelsea and dad to Archie and Mollie, who have all accepted that conversations in their house can unexpectedly involve coffee extraction, wholesale pricing, non-league football or an unnecessarily detailed breakdown of burger quality.

Specialist subjects: coffee, Sussex football, burgers, overthinking things, having opinions nobody asked for, and confidently predicting football results shortly before being proved completely wrong.