Tag: Project Restart

by Mike Birchall

ALL YOUR LOCKDOWN LONGIES OPTIONS!

Right, we’ve successfully trialed a full Sunday evening of socially responsible lockdown Longies, and have come up with a full programme of nights and options for the foreseeable future. Some of this may still be subject to change, but for the time being here is what we have to offer.

LEAGUES

For the time being, the only 3-a-side Longies Leagues we will be running will be on a Sunday, starting this weekend (14th June). We are offering up leagues at three separate times of the evening:

League One: 40 minute games at 4.30pm and 5.15pm

League Two: 40 minute games at 6pm and 6.45pm

League Three: 40 minute games at 7.30pm and 8.15pm

CASUAL BOOKINGS / FRIENDLIES

Casual bookings are classed as groups of 6 making a booking and taking a slot on a pitch and having a game between themselves.

Friendlies are groups of three contacting us and asking us to match them up with a game against another group of three.

All bookings come with a referee who will help to ensure social distancing is maintained, as well as ensuring the rules of the game are enforced as normal! The times these bookings can be made are as follows:

Monday: 8pm and 8.45pm

Tuesday: 8pm and 8.45pm

Wednesday: 9pm

Sunday: Whatever time slots are available between league games (we will try and keep some slots free at most of the available times)

PLAYING RULES

LONGIES PLAYING RULES
Click the link to be directed to the Playing Rules page

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

LONGIES REGULATIONS
Click the link to be directed to the Regulations page

If you want to book in for any of the above, head to the homepage and complete a ‘Join A League’ form, call or text 07809252658, email skballers@hotmail.com, or get in touch via any of our social media pages.

by Mike Birchall

BALLERS PROJECT RESTART – UPDATE

Afternoon current / former / future Ballers, we hope you’re all still well and plodding along. When we went into lockdown scarves and wooly hats were still part of the Ballers nightly uniform! Here’s a quick update on what our restart plans currently are…

It remains unlikely we’ll be given the go ahead to start up full contact football for a while, but as soon as government guidelines allow we will be going ahead with our previously proposed Longies League which allows for us to manage social distancing (https://skballers.com/2020/05/06/ballers-longies-league/ for details).

We’ll keep a close eye on what Boris has to say in the coming weeks, and will look to get something started within 7 days of any change that allows us to. This effectively means that if the lockdown is eased this Sunday, 31st May, we could be getting started on Sunday 7th June, which is just over a week away! We will start initially with Sunday, and will be happy to run leagues at pretty much any time of the day. We hope everyone understands that half the number of players at any one time means we will only be making half the money, so we won’t be able to justify coming entirely off furlough full time just yet, but we obviously want to give people the opportunity to start kicking a ball around again in a semi-competitive manner. So in an ideal world as many teams as possible will find a suitable time on a Sunday to play. We will look to roll out alternative nights once we’ve got Sunday started, based on demand.

What we need you to do now is have a chat with your lads (or in the case of any potential new teams, round up some lads!) and let me know your thoughts. I could do with answers off all potential teams on the 4 following questions:

  1. Are your lads up for it, or would they rather wait until we are back up and running fully?
  2. How many lads are up for it, and therefore how many teams you will be wanting me to find space for (if there’s 6 or 7 of you, that will presumably be two teams!)?
  3. Can your lads do Sunday, and if so what would be your preferred time of day? We would entertain running leagues in the early afternoon (2pm-4pm), early evening (4pm-6pm) and later evening (6pm-8pm), so please let us know of any times you definitely couldn’t do. These times are just examples…
  4. If Sunday is a no go, what other nights between Monday and Wednesday could you do?

Please understand that this is effectively going to be like starting up a brand new business, and we don’t know how long we will have to do this for. There will also undoubtedly be teething problems, so a bit of patience would be appreciated.

Please help to make things as simple as possible for us!