Tag: sunday

by Mike Birchall

THE 100 CLUB!

We are roughly 6 weeks away from marking a significant milestone of 5 years in business, but before we get to celebrate that, we have something else to feel pretty pleased about.

Having recently restarted a number of our league seasons across our two venues, and having been in a position to add extra teams to each of these leagues, we have hit triple digits in our league team numbers for the first time!

To be able to say that we now have 103 teams across our 6 leagues feels like a significant achievement, and should certainly cement our position as a major player in the small sided football game in the Stockport area! Hopefully a few of you will see that number and realise just how many teams we have to juggle around on a weekly basis!

If you have been with us or were with us since day 1, we couldn’t have done it without you and we’re so grateful to you all. If you’ve only recently discovered us and are part of the new batch of teams, we’re glad you were able to find us as we continue to build our dynasty. Every piece of social media commenting, liking or sharing has helped us keep spreading the word, as we don’t exactly have a massive advertising budget, so if you could all continue to do your part it would be appreciated.

Potential further venues could be in the pipeline going forward, so it’s time to start aiming at 200…!

by Mike Birchall

SUNDAY LEAGUE – AN UPDATE

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.

by Mike Birchall

BALLERS RE-ASSEMBLE!

It’s almost time for us to wheel out all the ‘Sixes’ related puns again (we’re bringing sixy back, let’s talk about six, baby etc etc)!

From today, Monday 1st March, we are back on it! We’ve taken the opportunity during the latest lock down to have a break, do some housework etc, but from today we will be regularly checking the Ballers phone and social media pages. We’ll work out where we were at the time of lock down, work out what league spaces we have to offer, and try and make sure they are filled in time for the return! If you weren’t playing with us at the time of lock down, you best get onto us quickly as spaces will be extremely limited.

As things stand we are due to start back on Monday 29th March at Reddish, and Wednesday 31st March at Woodley.

All leagues will continue from where they left off, so you don’t need to worry about losing whatever progress you had made at the time of lock down.

As we receive any further updates on the protocol surrounding covid measures, we’ll be sure to let everyone know.

We haven’t completely switched off during the lock down, as work has continued on what will become our BRAND NEW WEBSITE, which will hopefully contain enough new aspects to keep even the hardiest of geeks happy!

With gyms, pubs and restaurants remaining closed, and crowds still unable to attend football matches, this is your best bet for catching up with the boys…

Don’t hang around!

by Mike Birchall

SK BALLERS PROMOTIONAL VIDEO!

Covid might have come along to slow down the Ballers momentum, but work continues on the very first, in house Ballers promotional video.

Pre-lockdown, Delph & Safety were subject to the first batch of filming, with player interviews and match footage taken on the night by Viaduct Video. So far the 60 second clip below was the initial teaser of the footage that we got on the night.

Recently we were finally able to film part 2, as long standing Team Tom gave us some of their musings before getting involved in a highly entertaining game against fellow Ballers veterans Inter Your Sister.

Part 3 will hopefully follow in the coming weeks, with the full Ballers promotional video hopefully ready to be unleashed by October. As well as the full promotional video, we’ll also be turning the footage into three full team profile videos, which will become a regular thing as time goes on.

The team for the third profile video will be confirmed in the near future…

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!

by Mike Birchall

SOMETHING NEW! TEAM PROFILE VIDEOS!

⚽🆕SOMETHING NEW!🆕⚽

We hinted at this last week on our social media channels, but here we go!


Following discussions with Alex at Viaduct Video, our Ballers promo video is going to be made up of INDIVIDUAL TEAM PROFILE VIDEOS! The first of which will be filmed NEXT MONTH.

For the first one, we are looking for a team made up of lads who are mostly aged 21 or under, who have been with us for at least a year, and already have or are currently due a set of Ballers loyalty shirts (which we will make sure we get ordered before the night of filming).

We’ve got some teams in mind, but if you genuinely would love to be the first team involved, get in touch and let us know. The profile will involve:

⚽ A team interview before a game (would involve your team getting to us an hour earlier one night)

⚽ The filming of your game, potentially with a player or two mic’d up to catch some of the in game chat

⚽ Quick post match interview with individuals after the game

Alex will then trawl through the footage and put together a kick ass final video which we’ll use to promote Brand Ballers!

We’ll be doing two more team profile videos at a later date (hopefully quite soon after), and these three will go towards completing the full promo video.

That won’t be the end of it though, as team profile videos will become part of what we offer up to our long standing teams as time goes by…!

by Mike Birchall

NEW YEAR – NEW LEAGUES!

The start of a new decade sees the restart of a number of our current leagues with brand new seasons! As part of the standard news years resolutions to get fit, lose weight etc, make sure some weekly Ballers action is part of that!

NEW REDDISH SUNDAY LEAGUE

Our biggest league night is the first of the new year to start up as the Sunday evening league kicks off on 5th January. You can get straight back into it by registering a team for one of our 4 divisions, which ensures we can find a standard to suit all teams. Games kick off between 5.30pm and 8.30pm, but we do our best to accommodate any issues that teams might have with the earlier or later times.

NEW REDDISH TUESDAY LEAGUE

Our Tuesday league was a highly competitive division last season with all teams capable of taking points off each other and the title going down to the final night. The new league kicks off on 7th January, and we’re currently a couple of teams away from being able to split the league into two divisions. Games kick off at 8pm or 9pm.

NEW REDDISH WEDNESDAY LEAGUE

A day after the Tuesday league restarts, the Wednesday league follows suit. One division with all games kicking off at 9pm, this is the ideal league night for anyone who wants a fixed kick off time with shifts that suit a later game. One space available for the new season which kicks off on 8th January.

All Reddish leagues are 50 minute games priced at £5 per player, per game.

NEW WOODLEY WEDNESDAY LEAGUE

We then have a couple of weeks gap before the brand new Woodley Wednesday league kicks off on 22nd January. The current season is the first one that Ballers have run at Woodley, and after a great start a few teams struggled in the run up to Christmas. We expect a strong start to the new season as everyone gets back into it, so don’t waste any time in registering your team. The Woodley Wednesday league is 40 minute games at £5 per player, per game, with games kicking off between 7pm and 9.15pm

FOR DETAILS ON THE NEW LEAGUES, OR ANY SPACES AVAILABLE ON OUR OTHER NIGHTS, CALL 07809252658, OR EMAIL [email protected]

by Mike Birchall

BRAND NEW SUNDAY LEAGUE – THE FORMAT

We’ve had a little play with the format in the Sunday league in recent seasons in an attempt to accommodate all teams who wanted to take part while also attempting to expand the league where we can.

At times this has meant we have had some divisions containing 6 teams, playing each other twice, while others have contained 8 teams, with the division being cut in half after everyone had played each other once. Both of these formats meant that the season remained at 10 weeks in length, but to be honest it started getting quite messy last season.

The other issue we have is that with kick off times that vary from 5.30pm to 8.30pm, we have a number of teams who want / can only do early games, while others only want / can do later ones. Having these teams in the same division can cause nightmares…

So, here’s our plan for the new season:

DIVISION SIZE

The 8 team division experiment is OVER. We are going to limit the Sunday league to 4 divisions of 6 going forward, unless we have an influx of teams that could make up an entire extra division.

KICK OFF TIME ISSUES

We think we’re being dead clever here… Of the 4 divisions we currently have, the top division will be the top division, the bottom division will be the bottom division and the teams in those divisions will still have to play the variety of kick off times (though we will do what we can to accommodate). The two divisions in the middle will effectively become two ‘Championships.’ One of these Championships will primarily have earlier games, the other will primarily have later games. This won’t be an exact science, but will only be used to try and accommodate those teams that specifically struggle for the earlier or later games. This will make it a lot easier for us to schedule games in general, but also easier for us to give the teams what they want.

Fingers crossed for a strong Autumn 2019 season!

THE BRAND NEW SUNDAY LEAGUE KICKS OFF ON 22ND SEPTEMBER – GET IN TOUCH FOR DETAILS!

by Mike Birchall

Weekly Round Up – 24th May 2019

LEAGUE NEWS

We got so close to getting our first Thursday night action on this week, but those pesky EU elections meant we couldn’t use the club this week. There’s always next week, and we’ll be doing another tournament NEXT THURSDAY, 30TH MAY at 8pm. The league will start as soon as we’ve got enough teams to get going, but we don’t think it will take long.

We’ve also got our NEW SUNDAY & MONDAY LEAGUES starting in the next few weeks, so there are plenty of options for anyone who is looking to get their team signed up.

For more information or to register your team, fill in a ‘Join A League’ form from the homepage.

SUNDAY LEAGUE

PREMIERSHIP

Beercalona look to be on the brink of retaining their Sunday league title as they edged a cracking game 10-7 against Morning Glory, with Tykio Williams claiming 6 of their goals. The only team who can now catch them are Gangs Of Dwight Yorke, but that looks unlikley after they were surprisingly beaten 9-3 by a Duno side who are slowly piecing together a pretty decent team. Kaylon top scored for them with 5 as they look to secure a top division space for next season. On a full night for the top flight, Kipsta Cobras picked up their second win of the season, beating KR FC 6-4, with the new boys potentially looking at a season in the Championship when the new league kicks off next month. Jack Horgan and Kyle Clarke both scored doubles for Kipsta, while Jake Dean did likewise in reply for KR.

CHAMPIONSHIP

A strange night in the Championship as the top two were both comfortably beaten. FC AOTS first defeat of the season was finally inflicted by Bangers & Pash, who picked up an 8-3 win to mirror the scoreline from the previous time these two sides met. Rory Kelly and Lewis (just Lewis) grabbed three each on a night that AOTS will want to forget. Nice Buns B‘s only previous defeats this season had been against AOTS, but they conceded 5 second half goals without reply to lose 7-2 to Sevilla Lacatalent, with Tom Jackson scoring three of the Sevilla goals.

LEAGUE ONE

The title race is just about done and dusted in League One, as The McMuffin Men‘s 7-4 win over Inter Your Sister sees them go 6 points clear at the top. Rob Cresswell grabbed the three second half goals that secured the win in a keenly contested game. Polish Army lead the race for second place as they beat FC Stront Bakken 9-3, with Bania netting the bulk of the goals with 5. Team Tom have the games in hand but aren’t in the best of form, meaning that race could go to the wire, and they were beaten 5-2 by Step Brothers this week, with Josh Armitage scoring three.

LEAGUE TWO

We look to be on the brink of a true underdog story in the Sunday basement, as SK Six, who barely had a win to their name prior to the start of this season, are on the brink of the League Two title. They beat Pathetico Madrid 4-1 this week, with the goals spread out between 4 different players. Pathetico have been replaced in second place by Deportivo Lack Of Talent, who beat CA FC 5-3, a result which will make CA feel a little better after last weeks hammering! Rhys Moult scored 4, including the late goal that clinched the win, but they still sit 6 points behind SK.

In friendly action, The McMuffin’s stopped on to give Stockport Eagles a game, but the second game was a step too far for them as Eagles comfortably won 12-5 with Matt Kealy scoring 4 and Rob Piercy three.

THE NEW SUNDAY LEAGUE STARTS ON 16TH JUNE – SPACES AVAILABLE AS WE LOOK TO EXPAND

MONDAY LEAGUE

PREMIERSHIP

Expected Toulouse picked up a thoroughly expected win this week to move to the brink of claiming the Monday Premiership title. There was no messing around as they raced into a 6-0 half time lead over Cheadle FC, and Joe Roche ended the match with 5 goals to his name and Waz Akram three as they eventually ran out 10-0 winners. Officially only Grand Street Wanderers can now catch Toulouse, as they came within minutes of a clean sheet of their own before conceding two late goals in a 5-2 win over Netsix & Chill, with Jay Bebbington’s three goals ending up being the difference between the sides.

CHAMPIONSHIP

Just the one Championship game took place this week as the season winds down, and it saw Ruby Kazan finish their season with 9 wins out of 10 as they beat Athletico Pathetico 12-6 in a game that had an end of season feel about it. Howie Thomas-Leech got 4 and Jordan Cunningham three as Kazan had what will presumably be their last comfortable game for a little while…

A couple of friendlies took place while we get the season finised off, and a new look Phantom Brazilians picked up an impressive 6-3 win over Nice Buns, with Daniel Clayton netting three times. The newly named duo of Ctrl Alt De Ligt (formerly Unprotected Cesc) and Trent The Fish (formerly Buff Daddy) also played out a fairly laid back fixture, with De Ligt comfortably winning 7-2 with just Fidelis Eberegbe helping himself to more than one goal.

THE NEW MONDAY LEAGUE STARTS ON 10TH JUNE, BUT IS CURRENTLY FULL. LOOK ELSEWHERE OR GET IN TOUCH TO JOIN THE WAITING LIST!

TUESDAY LEAGUE

Things they are a changing at the top of the Tuesday league. We have new leaders this week as Gangsta’s Allardyce were surprisingly comfortable 12-1 winners over For Fuch’s Sake, who drop down to 5th but should still make the cut when the league splits. It was hat tricks all round for Callum Thompson, Adam Needham and David Crozier as Gangsta’s won a game we were quite pleased we didn’t film! The game we did film featured two teams with 100% records since joining as Speshull City took on Snorting Lisbon. This one was also surprisingly one sided as Josh Gittings 7 goals helped Snorting to a 13-5 win that sees them go second.

A much tighter game saw Reece Nuttall claim the MOTM award and a clean sheet as Leavemyarsealona beat Michu At De Gea Ba 3-0, while Barcabona made their Ballers debut and gave a good account of themselves before eventually losing 7-2 to Stroke Titty, who struck three late goals to confirm the win. Jay Willingham got three of their goals, and Chris Edge got two on his Ballers return after a long time away!

SPACES ARE AVAILABLE FOR AN IMMEDIATE START IN THE TUESDAY LEAGUE, WITH THE LEAGUE SET TO SPLIT IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS!

WEDNESDAY LEAGUE

The big two in the Wednesday league have moved into the prime positions as we continue to catch up games after the early season disruption. New Team stay top but for a little while we were wondering if they were going to slip up for the second week in a row as they trailed FC Rhino Ket 3-1 approaching the interval. They drew themselves level by the break and scored 5 unanswered goals in the second period to clinch an 8-3 win, with all 6 of their players netting, including ‘keeper Jonny Taylor who was given a run out in the second period. Rob Elliott and Matt Brown also grabbed two apiece. Wellspring looked to be cruising to a comfortable victory over Out Of Shape FC as they went 5-0 up in the opening 20 minutes, but the Shapers are nothing if not spirited, and they technically ‘won’ the rest of the game but left with a 9-5 defeat. Lewis Arden and Mike Cocks both scored three for Wellspring, with Adam Grayda scoring two of Out Of Shape’s goals. At the other end of the table, Stockport Eagles and Exeter Gently had just one win between them so far this season. It was Eagles who had that win coming into this weeks game, but Exeter took early control, going 3-0 up in the opening 20 minutes. Kristian Igo’s second goal in the second half, and Adam Robison’s last minute strike meant they held on for a 5-3 win as Eagles put on a spirited second half fight back.

THE WEDNESDAY LEAGUE IS CURRENTLY FULL! THE TUESDAY AND THURSDAY LEAGUES ARE NOT…!

THURSDAY LEAGUE

We could have been writing about our very first Thursday night of action this week, but the EU elections dictated that the club was a polling station and we weren’t allowed in… There’s always next week!