Solo Leagues

You have your teams, goals, balls, hopefully enough room to lay a pitch, a set of rules that make sense to you, all systems go then. One plays a few games and for some that's all they want, others may want to take it a little further, how one game has a bearing on the next. Welcome to the world of the "Fantasy League". A league where anyone can take on anyone, where fantasy and reality are divided by very thin lines that are easily crossed.

Solo Leagues

One could simply pit one’s favourite teams against each other, maybe join a solo league where you play against other solo players in a league, the ISSL is probably the biggest here. I know of one or two smaller leagues in operation but they seem to be small affairs run for friends and family. If that's your kind of thing search for ISSL on facebook, and for more details drop the owner a line. Or do what I and countless others have done, form your own "Fantasy League", use your favourite teams, local teams, even local towns and villages as a basis for naming teams. I’m sure you could think of many more ways.
I myself hail from Sussex, some say the “Bonfire Capital” of the world, due to the amount of Bonfire Societies in and around the Sussex area. The bonfire celebrations in the County Town of Lewes alone boasts 7 of these Societies and is a rather grand affair with parades around the town then off to the bonfires, each Society hosting their own particular bonfire and fireworks display at their own designated bonfire site. Look it up if you know nothing about it it’s a long standing tradition to be sure.
Anyway back to the point, I formed a League based on a number of these societies from the Sussex area, so the Bonfire Alliance League was born.
It could be taken further still, you could name all your players, buy and sell in a transfer window, Like David Forsyth, who uses actual players names from teams past and present, forms squads for each team, and each team has it’s own finances to administer in the close season. I’ll go much further into David's Solo leagues financial and administration arrangements in more detail in a future post.
As I hope you can see from the above, one maybe as simple or as elaborate as one chooses when playing games.
 
 Buxted Park Rangers score their opening goal in the Bonfire Alliance against Cliffe Town

Administering a League

This Is so simple, pick the amount of teams you want, but be realistic. If you’re going to play the league out It takes time, 6 teams, playing home and away equates to 30 matches, 8 teams 56, and 10 teams a mere 90 matches. Having the spare time to devote to the league is probably the biggest consideration.
Other things to take into account is space, can you leave a table up in situ ready for the next match, if not how much hassle is it to set up again. Because no matter what people do (and I’m no different here) if it’s ready and available it’s more likely to be done more regular than if you have to set things up every time. I myself had this kind of problem at first, but made myself a playing board, nothing elaborate a pitch attached to a MDF board, which lives behind a wardrobe in the spare room, in a couple of minutes its out goals attached (which are pegged into place into the board), awaiting the arrival of the teams. I have to do it this way because my long suffering spouse tends to get a tad upset if I leave all my toys lying about. I’ve been told many times that the kids weren’t allowed to do that so don’t think you are. I just love the way her eyebrows form an inverted “V” when she says it though. I suppose she has a point not all guests who stay over want to sleep on the floor, or want the offer of a tent in the garden.
Enough about my wife (only joking dear!), and our guests sleeping arrangements, Lets get back on track here. When I started the Bonfire Alliance I decided on 2 divisions of 8 teams, to play out that would have been 112 matches, throw in a cup competition for the 16 teams and that's another 15 games, now totalling 127 games. Which at my 20min match duration was over 42 hours, playing time, which is doable, but it’s not my only interest in life, (I only wrote that because my beloved was peering over my shoulder). I decided to play all the 1st Division matches, all cup ties, and 8 random matches from the 2nd Division incorporating all of the 8 teams home and away. The rest of the 2nd Division matches would be decided with a dice system. Now that was acceptable to me over an 8 month period, basically 1 afternoon a week (4 games), giving more than enough time to spend doing other things in my spare time, but keep a league running on a regular basis.

Home Advantage

Well to be fair there isn’t one is there, and all teams have the same skill level or should have if you’re not cheating, well I say cheating but can you really cheat yourself? I suppose subconsciously you could. Statistics have proved that in the top league in football since 1888 the percentage of home to away wins is approximately 50% home to 25% away, with the remaining 25% ending in draws. In our leagues over time one would expect to see a fair split between home and away wins. This may not bother you, it may on the other hand entice you to redress that balance. One way taken straight from the 70’s rules is award a penalty to the home team before the start, giving them a potential 1-0 start. Meaning that the away would have to score 2 goals to have any chance of winning if the penalty was successful. Another method that David related to me was if the away side score the first goal the decision goes to DAR (Dice Assistant Referee) 1,2,or 3 the goal is disallowed, 4,5,or 6 the goal stands, how this little gem would effect results I’m not sure as I haven’t tried it, but I have the same feeling as David it might not be as cranky as it sounds. Yet another method may be to use different players for the home and away sides, for example, flat bases for home and heavyweights for away. I couldn’t comment on any validity of this as I only play with heavyweights as to whether this would effect results drastically, it may well do I’ll let you decide. You may think of other ways or have already incorporated a system into your play, if you have great stuff, let me know or comment and share below.

Fixtures

With modern technology these days organising a fixture list is really easy. I use  Fixturelist.com  sign up it’s free (we all like free at this blog), and you can create and save your league, add divisions at will, organise a cup competition, save the results and it generates league tables as well. The only drawback I’ve found with this is you cannot save the League to a file, (not as I’ve found at any rate). It doesn’t offer the facility to print it out either, but I’ve taken a screen shot of the tables after each round of fixtures and that has proved a decent workaround for myself.

And Finally

Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas that you can expand on, and a big thank you to David for letting me use and share his ideas in this post. Let the games begin.
 
Keep On Flicking.
 
Ian

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