The Bonfire Alliance

 

Since I began this blog I've often referred to the Bonfire Alliance League, but never really written about it other than in context to portray a particular point. I’ve even offered the Bonfire Alliance rule book on the downloads page as an insight to how I play, for no other reason other than to share my ideas that readers can use, change, build upon, or discard however they see fit.

I thought however it was about time I introduced it’s members and how the league was founded, and perhaps breathe some life into it, now it’s about to embark on it’s 3^rd Season.

The Early Days

When I started playing solo, it was probably due to the fact that the Government decided that they wanted to put all our lives on hold for a while, fair enough under the circumstances at the time. Then they only went and cancelled all forms of football. Now they can lock me down but taking away my football was sacrilege. So out came the books, the videos, (yes I still have a VCR), the DVD’s, and YouTube became the main sources for my football fix. It was around this time I remembered Subbuteo.

I literally hadn’t played for 20 years apart from the odd competitions between friends that had sprung up when the mood took us, which to be fair wasn’t very often. But now I was locked down it became an obsession. I scoured eBay for a set, and realised I wasn’t alone due to the prices I was looking at. I did manage to find something though, a Display Edition, with a pitch included, at a price my long suffering wife wouldn’t knock seven bells out of me for buying.

 

I hadn’t quite thought this through however. Let me explain, our table is round but extends and you can sit 6 comfortably around it quite easily when extended, but a Subbuteo pitch doesn’t fit, unless you resigned yourself to the fact that corners were going to be, shall we say tricky at best.

So I cobbled together a board, (more expense), and eventually managed to get the darn thing on the table. The rest as they say is history.

First Competition

I quickly realised that playing solo wasn’t going to work playing 2 player rules, and that started me on my journey of putting a rule set together that allowed me to play solo, I also started the blog after talking to a few friends who also wanted to play solo, but were a little unsure where to start. Over the last few years those rules have changed or evolved as things do to a point where I’m happy with my efforts, they will probably continue to change from time to time, but not as frequently as they once did, they are and as far as I'm concerned will always be work in progress.

All this led me to play my first solo competition around a couple of years ago. The first competition was the Original Football League with the 12 Original Members, 132 matches of pure unadulterated fun played over a period of around 4 weeks, I was literally spending every day playing around 5 matches a day and Aston Villa (a team I’ve supported since my Dad first took me to see Villa play West Ham in 1966) won the League. I then started to realise perhaps there may have been a little bias in play here whether it was unconscious in nature or not. I think at that point it dawned on me that perhaps having Villa in my league was not such a good idea.

 

 

The Bonfire Alliance Premiership lineup for Season 3, from left to right, Maresfield Albion, Buxted Park Rangers, Commercial Athletic, Southover United, Lindfield United, South Heighton, Waterloo Rovers, and Lewes Borough.

 

Birth of the Bonfire Alliance

I decided to go down the fictitious route, but what to base the team names on was causing a little conundrum at first, but my significant other said why don’t you use Sussex Bonfire Societies as a basis for the teams and form some kind of league. I quickly warmed to this idea, and found that Sussex has more Bonfire Societies than Arsenal have had FA Cup wins. So the Bonfire Alliance was born, and 2 divisions were created, The Premiership which was formed of the 7 Lewes Bonfire Societies, plus a Qualifier from the 9 societies of the Championship, and we end up with 2 divisions of 8.

Original Members

The original members of the Premiership were Buxted Park Rangers (Qualifiers), Cliffe Town, Commercial Athletic, Lewes Borough, Nevill Juniors, Southover United, South Street Wanderers, and Waterloo Rovers.

The Championship Teams (this is where the Alliance comes from) were Eastbourne Victoria, East Hoathley, Edenbridge Town, Lindfield United, Maresfield Albion, Newick Rovers, South Heighton, and Staplecross Athletic.

Strips were allocated, and I tried to allocate colours that were as close to that particular societies colours as is practical, and the competition began in earnest. Southover United won the inaugural Premiership Title, South Heighton the Championship and were promoted to the Premiership at the expense of South Street Wanderers who finished bottom of the Premier. The BA cup was won by South Street who couldn’t beg a league win, but somehow managed to go all the way to the final beating the Championship Champions South Heighton 3-0.

Season 2

Season 2 saw the addition of the BA Conference, which isn’t actually an extra division it’s 8 teams who play in a Trophy knockout, and the semi finalists also qualify for the BA Cup 1^st round. The actual Bonfire Alliance teams basically form a rough circle with Lewes at its center, I chose the Conference teams from Villages and areas within this circle. Their criteria for being considered was simple they must have a Bonfire Society.  

I decided not to play the Conference on a league basis due to the amount of extra games that would have to be played which was 56, including all the cup and play-off games, it just didn’t fit into my timescale. So Season 2 generated 112 league Games, 19 BA Cup games, plus 9 Trophy and play-off games a total of 140 games which to be honest is about my limit. As much as I’d like to play more, other commitments have to be addressed as well, and we all have our limits.

Season 2 saw Southover United retain their title, on a final day that saw top placed South Heighton lose to Nevill Juniors, and Southover beating Cliffe Town to take the title by a single point. Cliffe were duly relegated, as were Nevill, as they lost out in the play-offs to Lindfield United. South Heighton did manage to win the BA Cup though beating Buxted Park Rangers 3-2 in an end to end final.

Slight Changes for Season 3

Season 3 will kick off in a couple of weeks. First off the rules have changed slightly, I’ve included the regrouping, and goal kick placement rules for this season, I’ve discussed these rules in detail in previous posts, and I have done a fair amount of trials using these rules in the close season and feel that they merit their inclusion for the season ahead. I’ve also added a few more games into the season. A take on the Community Shield the usual English Football League season opener, called the Lord Mayors Charity Trophy. So Southover United will take on South Heighton in a couple of weeks, as well as the BA Trophy first round which is the quarter final as well as being a preliminary round for the BA Cup.

It’s also been decided to include a 2 legged Championship play-off in which the Conference Trophy winners play the bottom Championship side for the right to play in the Championship in season 4. The Premiership play-off has also been changed slightly, the semi final will now be a 2 legged affair but the Final will be played as a single game. So the games have increased to 144 games, but we now have the possibility of a non league team having a shot at promotion into the league at the end of the season.

A Brand New Page

My intention is to include a page on this blog on which I can publish results and tables throughout the season for the Bonfire Alliance for anyone interested, maybe the odd report with pictures will be included, but that’s basically a side project and will not be the main focus of the blog. There’s a time and place for everything and I don’t want the focus to shift from what I do now to being a Bonfire Alliance tribute blog, it makes no sense in the great scheme of things.

An Unofficial Solo World Cup

Visitors here from the “Alive and Kicking”, Facebook group will probably be aware that I’ve been involved in helping to organise a Solo World Cup Tournament taking place later this year, I must admit it has generated a little more interest than I ever imagined it would. Based loosely on this years actual Qatar World Cup, we aimed to recruit 32 players to take part, and have amassed an amazing 24 players at short notice, there were more but some sadly have had to drop out due to other arrangements, but 24 all the same is amazing, and I thank all of them for at least wanting to take part, and all the enthusiasm that they have generated.

The organisation of the event has had it’s pitfalls and shortcomings, but none of us has had the experience of such an undertaking before, but lessons have been learnt along the way, and if this proves to be successful we can hopefully organise another event within the group next year, and be a little more professional in our organisation, to make registration of interest simpler not only for those wishing to take part but also for us to do the administration. I may at some point develop an Event Website or Blog, so all information is in one place, making registration, and submitting results as easy as possible for all concerned, that is if we ever decide to do this kind of thing again. That’s for the future though, so in the meantime……

Keep on Flicking

Ian