To all Sunday league teams,
The last few weeks have seen numerous disruptions to what seemed like being an extremely competitive Sunday league season. It’s reached a point where we want to give you a little update as to how the league, and in particular your division, is currently up to.
When the season started, we’d made it to 5 divisions, we’d worked out how we were going to cope with teams wanting later or earlier kick off times, and we were feeling fairly pleased with ourselves. However, there have been very few ‘clear’ weeks where we would realistically have a chance that all teams could play. We know that we have some teams that will field a team, no matter the occasion, but we also acknowledge that not everyone is in a position to put a game of 6-a-side on a Sunday evening above all else in their lives. On week 1 we had to cope with the final day of the Premier league season, with fans back in stadiums and City lifting the trophy. Week 2 saw the bank holiday, week 3 was fairly clear, and on week 4 we had England playing. We’ve even had Fathers Day, then the Euros Final! These are things we just have to cope with, but it will go some way to explaining the difference in the number of games certain teams have played. Every season we expect teams to play 10 league games in a 12 week period, we expect that this season may be slightly longer. We would always rather have leagues decided on games played, rather than forfeit wins, but we know seasons can’t go on forever and we don’t want those teams who smash out their 10 games in 10 weeks having to play 4 weeks of friendlies while everyone else catches up!
Fingers crossed, all the major issues are now behind us until the new Premier League season kicks off, so we need to make some headway into getting this season back on track!
Here’s a quick breakdown of the how each division is currently looking, and the issues that have faced teams so far.
PREMIERSHIP
Despite telling us the lads were keen to carry on, Dunno 2.0 dropped out of the league before they had kicked a ball, leaving a space in the top division. Top division gaps are notoriously difficult to fill once we’re into a season, as it takes a team that fancies their chances to step up to the top flight straightaway. This past week we have found such a team, but with them joining so far into the season they will play just one round of fixtures. This means all the other teams in the league will finish their season having played 9 games, and the new team playing 5.
CHAMPIONSHIP
Long standing Bangers & Pash left us just before the season started, meaning we had a space heading into the season. After a heavy defeat in their opening game, we had to drop The McMuffin Men down a level in order for them to be able to continue. This has left the Championship with 4 teams for a while, but we have now filled both of those spaces. With one new team taking over The McMuffin Men’s fixtures, there’s a chance they could play all of their remaining games. The other new team will play one round of games, again meaning that most of the teams will finish their season having played 9 games.
LEAGUE ONE NORTH
This division has been mostly fine, there’s just a couple of teams who could really do with getting some games played in the coming weeks…! The McMuffin Men jumped in after the first week, and It Wasn’t A Foul FC came in when Team Tom dropped into League Two in order to give them a chance to survive.
LEAGUE ONE SOUTH
No major issues here either. Cale Green Canaries joined us a few weeks ago to replace Making Emile Of It, who dropped out after the first game, but they will be on course to complete the remaining fixtures.
LEAGUE TWO
This is where we got greedy… With teams waiting to join, we added two extra teams to League Two after the first week, with the idea being that all teams play each other once, then the league splits in two with the top 4 and bottom 4 playing each other for a second time to make a 10 game season. Pathetico Madrid dropped out early, and have only recently been replaced by Exeter Gently. But with Exeter being 4 games behind Holland FC, who have played every available week, it’s doubtful that we’ll be able to get them to catch up all of their missed games before we have to split the league. Our priority is to establish a top 4 and bottom 4 in the next couple of weeks so we can get the second part of the season started without having to make some teams wait around.
So there we have it. There is a chance that if all of the top places in each division are clear and sorted before everyone has played their fixtures, we may even call the season a little early so we can get the new one set up, but that depends on the results of upcoming fixtures!
If you have any questions about your division, or your team, feel free to ask away. Whatever patience you can show while we try and get certain teams caught up over the next few weeks would be very much appreciated.