So, we were extremely pleased to be able to be able to return to 4 divisions for the start of the new Sunday league which kicks off this weekend, and we know a lot of the new teams are reliable as they have been playing friendlies for weeks. Happy days!

But then more teams kept getting in touch wanting to get involved for the new season, so at the end of the current season we were left with 26 teams for 24 slots, and in the last couple of days we’ve had a couple more enquire about joining up. We find it very hard to say no to people, so here’s the plan…

We are still going to have 4 divisions. The top two divisions will be made up of 6 teams playing each other twice (nice and straightforward). The bottom two divisions will be made up of 8 teams. Each team will play each other once, then the top 4 and bottom 4 will be split with the teams in each half playing each other a second time. Both formats make it a 10 week season. We know we will have to add weeks on for games missed, especially as April contains City v Liverpool at 4.30pm on Sunday April 10th and Easter Sunday on 17th April.

As we also don’t want to have to start games at 4.30pm or 9pm, we are having a play with the kick off times, and this is very important. Where we have previously fit a 50 minute game into an hour long slot, we are now going to be fitting them into a 55 minute slot. This means there is NO SCOPE FOR GAMES RUNNING OVER IF TEAMS ARE LATE. If your game kicks off late it will still need to finish by the time of the kick off time of the next game.

The new kick off times are going to be as follows:

5pm, 5:55pm, 6:50pm, 7:45pm and 8:40pm

Once your game is done, please vacate the pitch as quickly as you can so the next game can get kicked off, out of respect to the other teams.

We are so grateful to be having to work out a problem of this nature. To have too many teams is something we could only have dreamed of, and though we got to 5 divisions last summer we know a lot of that was down to the release from lock down meaning everyone wanted to play. To get back to those team numbers is a vindication for the work we put in, and in no small part an indication of the quality of our referees, as teams wouldn’t stick around if our refs weren’t up to scratch!

We can’t wait to get going for the new season. Let’s have a good one!