Restart Update

League Match Secretary, Eric Owen, has issued the following update on the mini-leagues which are being organised for the end of the season:

Afternoon All

I hope everyone is well.

I wanted to give you all an update on the supplementary mini tournaments we intend to run to give as many of our sides as possible some football when the season restarts.

We will be dividing most of the divisions up into mini leagues of 4 or 5 teams which will predominantly be regionalised as best as we can. Each team will play each other in a league format and then depending on time and pitches etc there will be semi-finals or we may go straight to a final but we will advise as the tournaments progress. Obviously, there may be issues around weather and pitch availability.

Mini-leagues open to all teams already out of SAL Cups plus any losing in the first two rounds after we come back

We need clubs to be flexible with this as we will have teams who get knocked out in the SAL cups in the early weeks of our return joining the mini leagues as well. There will be fixtures for most sides who are already out of the cups on the 10th April but unfortunately, we will not be able to put all fixtures out until we know the results of the SAL cup rounds played on the 3rd. I will notify clubs of the potential league formats as soon as cup games on the 3rd April are out of the way and we know who has progressed or not.

Feel free to organise friendlies for the 3rd April if you are not in the SAL cups.

Fixtures will start on 10 April

The nature of these tournaments is to give our clubs competitive football and we are happy for you to mutually agree venues for these games if the home drawn clubs is struggling with pitches or agree different kick off times but as always, please notify myself and Daryl. I will try to pencil games in around your home pitch allocations you have informed me about. We will attempt to supply officials for all matches and usual league and county rules, discipline, and registration rules will apply.

Groups of 4 or 5 playing each other once, semi-finals (if possible) and finals to follow

If a team can't play a match for any reason, they will have to forfeit for obvious reasons, but we hope that won't happen as most of us are chomping at the bit to play.

Great news is that most clubs are entering the majority of their sides into these tournaments but please advise asap if for any reason a side changes it's mind. There may even be a trophy for each winner !!

This is quite a logistical headache to arrange so we would appreciate your patience and understanding in getting these games on.

Keep well and I will update you all regularly