January Blog – Our New Year Wish For Teams!

Just play.

That’s all we are after. This isn’t the Premier League or Champions League, this is SK Ballers.

While SK Ballers is massively important to us because it’s our business, we know our place. This is social football. That might change in the future, Sky might end up showing our games, team sponsorship could be a massive earner and players might be getting paid a hefty sum to play, but that’s not yet. If you’re the kind of team who cannot play unless you have your very best team available, maybe you need to have a little more perspective. United didn’t cancel the Derby with City because Pogba was suspended, and some might argue that game is bigger than any of the ones at our place. Even Kinky Slipper v Insole. I know. I did say SOME might argue…….

We hope you can all agree on the general levels of priorities with regards to world football:

World Cup > Champions League > Premier League > FA Cup > SK Ballers > Carabao Cup

Our trophies aren’t that expensive. They aren’t worth delaying and delaying that big top of the table game for. The leagues roll straight over so you’ll get another chance soon enough if this isn’t your season.

Everyone wants to win, of course they do, unfortunately it can’t always be that way. So just get 6 lads out on a pitch and enjoy your football, get yourself a bit fitter, and use the time to keep in touch with your mates. That’s what we’re here for.

LEAGUE RULE CHANGE

Taking all of the above into consideration, we are now looking at making the following rule change with regards to game cancellations:

EACH TEAM WILL BE PERMITTED TWO CANCELLATIONS THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF A SEASON. ANY FURTHER CANCELLATIONS AFTER THAT WILL MEAN THE GAME BEING FORFEITED AND A 5-0 WIN BEING AWARDED TO YOUR OPPOSITION.

We are doing this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, so that teams make sure they do everything they can to field a side for a game. At the minute it just seems a little too easy for teams to cancel without punishment, and has resulted in more games going down than we should expect. Secondly, it’s so that teams who fulfill all of their fixtures throughout the season aren’t punished by being made to wait several weeks for us to get the outstanding games played. We want to remain flexible and understand there will always be reasons why teams can’t field a side every now and then, but we have to try and prioritise the teams who want to play football.

These rule changes will come into place when a new league starts, we aren’t going to retrospectively punish any teams who’ve already cancelled games this season.

That being said, a massive thanks to all teams who’ve been involved last year, for getting us through the first full year and into our second, and hopefully we’ll still be around for a good while yet.

All the very best for the new year, and we’ll hopefully continue to see you throughout 2018!