Our brand new Sunday league kicked off this week, but as I’ve been having another little tinker I figured I best let you know how we’re set up for the new season…

With having to try and cram 28 teams in, we’ve gone with the usual 4 divisions, with the top division and bottom division being made up of 6 teams, and the two middle divisions made up of 8.

The divisions of 6 will be a straight forward play each other twice affair, while the divisions of 8 will involve each team playing each other once, then the top 4 and bottom 4 splitting off for the second round of games. This means that all divisions are still made up of 10 games in the season.

The reason why I’ve decided to do it this way this time, where previously the bottom division was the one that had 8 teams, is that it means that in the two divisions of 8, when we do the split the teams in the bottom half still have something to play for, namely avoiding relegation!

Hope that all makes sense, if there’s any questions, feel free to ask!

Hi guys, a quick update on how the current Thursday league is looking.

Generally, it hasn’t been great! Holidays, the return of the 11’s season, injuries, illness etc have meant that most teams have had spells this season where they have struggled to field a side. No one’s fault, just one of them things.

We’ve also had 6 teams drop out since the start of the season, and although we have teams lined up to come back in in the near future, I’m desperate to get this season finished as soon as possible. From my point of view, going to three divisions has been a mistake. Divisions of 6 are more affected by teams dropping out and cancelling, and it means we have fewer options for getting league fixtures on when teams cancel, so we will be returning to two bigger divisions for the new season. Three divisions of 6 does have it’s place, but this wasn’t the right time.

Over these next few weeks we’d appreciate as much patience as possible from our teams. Once the titles are decided in each division we will end the season and get the new one started. Obviously we still have our pitch fees to pay (the agreement with Life Leisure is that if we have any games on we have to pay our pitch costs in full), so we’d appreciate teams taking up the option of a friendly on the weeks where we can’t get you a league game

Here’s a quick breakdown of how the individual leagues are currently looking.

Premiership

In the last few weeks, Inter Yanan have dropped out, leaving us with 5 teams. Unfortunately, one team had played them twice, a few teams had played them once, and one team hadn’t played them at all. This means it would be unfair on those teams who’ve played them to give the other teams a forfeit win, so we will remove the results for those games and the season will be an 8 game season.

Championship

GX FC dropped out early on in the season and were replaced, Surf On Turf dropped out a few weeks ago and TNF have dropped out this week. We do have some teams due to return (GX FC being one), but the title looks like it is pretty much decided so the games that get played in the next few weeks might not make that much difference to the final league table.

League One

We had a team drop out before the season started, and The Fellas dropped out without playing a game. Stockport Athletic took one of the spaces, but they also dropped out last week. CS FC have moved over from the Wednesday league this week, but as with the Championship, it looks likely that the title will be decided in the next couple of weeks.

Again, thanks for your patience in recent weeks, it’s not been ideal. We will hopefully have the new season starting as soon as possible, probably early October.

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!