We've had singles, doubles and team knockout this year. What's happened to comps such as the mixed doubles, 3 a side, 5 a side etc.? Always used to get a fair few entrants from what I can remember, so it can't be due to lack of interest from players surely...?

As you're well aware son, that was a different league and there were three divisions back then and there wasn't that much interest for a lot of them either. The five-a-side was stopped because the last time it was ran there were 4 entries - at £5 per side this meant that £20 was raised and 10 trophies were handed out to the winners and runners-up. Even with the 3-a-side, only 8 sides were entered so that's £24 to go towards 6 trophies. The team knockout only received three entries one year when an entry fee was required which is why i include it in the winter league as an extra at no cost as otherwise there would more than likely be 4 entries max. We use the league's finances to cover trophies for the Team KO so we wouldn't be in a position to subsidise these other comps as well unless we dropped the quality of the trophies overall, which in my opinion would be a shame as how many times have you heard people criticising leagues when they hand out budget trophies? (that's when they hand any out at all of course). As a league we pride ourselves on the quality and range of trophies we give out and i'd be loathe to change that. In an ideal world we'd have loads of competitions with everyone wanting to play in them but this isn't the case in reality. Last summer we had 9 teams in the league so how many teams would would want to enter into 5-a-side comps etc? I'd guess at not many at all and not enough to get close tom covering costs. Sooty mentioned that he wanted to run a 3-a-side comp a couple of months ago and i said to him to find out if there was much interest first as we'd need to get approx 16 teams but this didn't take off. Not surprising really though as 16 teams would mean 48 players which when you think about is a heck of a lot in a league with just one division.

Fair enough!

yeah i looked into getting a 3's comp going but only had minimal interest unfortunately. and as clifty said it isnt practical unless you have a descent amount of enteries.

Fair dos Sooty. Shame.

The league aside, and just throwing an idea out there without really thinking it through, but I wonder if many people would be willing to pay to enter a cash 3-a-side comp, no trophies involved but maybe a fiver a person or a tenner a team to enter, all in all out prize money...?

Bit of advertising around various places and it could be quite a good day/night I reckon. Plus to a certain extent it wouldn't matter how many entries, as long as there were say a minimum of 16 teams.

Have to find a venue of course, and depending on the number of teams it could take a while to finish. As I say, just a random idea!