Author: Mike Birchall

CUSTOMER NOTICE – PRICE CHANGE

Hi all, unfortunately the time has come.

From 1st September, for the very first time, we will be increasing the price of games from £5 per player to £6 per player.

If you want a breakdown of the reasons why we’ve had to make this change, read on. If you don’t, you’ve got all the information that you need.

In recent months, the increased cost of our expenses has reached a point where the company bank accounts are not in a particularly healthy state. In fact, after paying the corporation tax bill for the Reddish side of the business for the last financial year, we didn’t have enough money left to pay the accountants and that months wages (we knew we’d make that up, but it gives an indication as to how close to the wind we’ve been sailing).

The price of £5 per player to play in my leagues has been in place since the business started in 2016, and even before that when I ran the leagues while working for Life Leisure, I had the price set at £5 per player. I mean, if you want to go back even further, when I worked at Powerleague I was able to change the Tuesday and Wednesday league format and make the price £5 per player.

Unfortunately, a fiver doesn’t get you as far as it used to, and purely from a survival point of view, this price increase is essential. The cost of footballs has nearly doubled since we started, and the referees have had two pay rises in the lifetime of the business. I can assure you that I don’t pay myself a huge salary!

We hope you understand the reasons, if you have any issues with this, please feel free to give me a shout.

Thanks,

Mike

WOODLEY WEDNESDAY LEAGUE – UPDATE

If you currently play in our Woodley Wednesday league, I’m afraid we have some bad news. After 4 years, and (to date) 465 league games, the Woodley Wednesday league will be finishing at the end of July.

This is not down to anything that we have done, it is basically down to a agreement between Life Leisure and Stockport County which has resulted in County putting some funding up for improvements to the facility, but they wanted access to more pitch time, including our two pitches on a Wednesday evening,

We’ve known for a few weeks that this was likely to happen, which has made running the current league a little difficult. But for the remainder of the time, here is how we plan to finish up the two divisions, and what we can hopefully offer as alternatives to our current teams.

PREMIERSHIP

We had a couple of drop outs early in the season, and because we had this issue hanging over us, we decided that with us being up against the clock, we would run the top division as a division of 6 with each team playing twice, making up a 10 week season.

CHAMPIONSHIP

With the Championship being a division of 8, and with us having the same time frame issues, this league will involve all teams playing each other once, then splitting top 4 and bottom 4 for a second round of fixtures, again making it a 10 game season.

We are currently on track to get all games finished by the 28th July, which is the last night of our booking.

ALTERNATIVES

Life Leisure were keen to offer up what limited pitch space they had to make up for us losing our Wednesday slot, so from August, here’s what we will be able to offer.

BRAND NEW TUESDAY LEAGUE

  • Kicking off Tuesday 1st August
  • One division (on one pitch)
  • Kick off times of 8pm, 8.40pm & 9.20pm

THURSDAY LEAGUE

Our existing Thursday league will be finishing up towards the end of July too, so there could be options for teams to move across to Thursday where the format of the league is the same as the Wednesday league has been for the last few years (two divisions, kick off times between 7pm & 9.15pm). We currently have a couple of spaces in the top division of the Thursday league, but if the league is finishing up and restarting around the end of the Wednesday season, we should be able to find room in the right division for teams.

Unfortunately, the spaces we have are going to be limited, so we can’t guarantee being able to re-home every team straightaway, but if you want to check with the lads and let us know what your preference would be, we will try and accommodate you.

We’re gutted to be losing this league, we’re sorry to all our current Wednesday teams, and we’d like to thank every team who’s helped us keep this league thriving over the last 4 years.

See you on another night!

THE FIGHT TO STAY A FIVER!

Hi all,

We’re approaching the 7th anniversary of Ballers, and from day 1 the price has been £5 per player, per game. It’s something I’ve been keen to maintain in financially difficult times for everyone, but as my prices have remained the same, the costs associated with running the business have only gone up.

When I started, I could get reasonable footballs for around £4.50, now they are £7 and that is only because John at Reddish North End gets that price due to the volume of footballs they order (most of which are probably mine!), I’ve put referees pay up twice in that time, and the costs of my pitches at Woodley have gone up 25% in the last two years.

This is as close as I’ve got to having to put the price up for the first time, as I’ve got my corporation tax due this month and it’s touch and go as to whether the company currently has enough money to cover it, which should be scary but I’m weirdly cool about it. So, here’s a couple of things teams can do in the short term to try and make sure we stick with how we are.

  1. Make sure all the lads pay! On certain nights, certain teams make us do extra work to get the money in, and if we didn’t do that I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t get it. I occasionally have people ask if they can pay double the next week when money is tight, and I don’t think I’ve ever said no, so don’t just try and pull a fast one. Also, please make sure to pay before the game, it’s not hard. Some people say it’s only a fiver, like we shouldn’t miss the odd one, but it all adds up. I can assure you I’m not living a life of luxury from the Ballers billions (but I’m running my own business doing what I want to do, so it’s swings and roundabouts!)…
  2. Please don’t use our match balls to warm up with. We probably lose more footballs getting kicked over between games than we do in games. At times I’ve seen people kick a ball over, then just go and grab another. You pay £5 for your game, if you kick a £7 ball over before you even start I’m down £2 just from you being there! Losing footballs in play is something we can’t do anything about, but I need to try and limit how many footballs we’re losing. We’ve recently gone through a box of 24 footballs in a week, that isn’t sustainable.
  3. Just generally keep me in the loop and give me early notice on a weekly basis if you’re struggling for a team. The more notice I have, the better chance I have of sorting out an alternative fixture for your opposition, therefore keeping the money coming in that pays the pitch fees! I know things can come up on the day, but if you’re cancelling on the day because lads are on holiday, or going to United / City / County, that’s something that I could know earlier. Even an early message saying you’re missing some regular lads but you’re trying to find fill ins can help, because at least then I can look at my options if you do end up cancelling.

That’s pretty much it for now. I suppose the main takeaway here is that if everyone keeps paying their fiver, hopefully the price will remain a fiver for everyone!

NEW SUNDAY LEAGUE – NEW FORMAT (AGAIN)…

Our brand new Sunday league kicked off this week, but as I’ve been having another little tinker I figured I best let you know how we’re set up for the new season…

With having to try and cram 28 teams in, we’ve gone with the usual 4 divisions, with the top division and bottom division being made up of 6 teams, and the two middle divisions made up of 8.

The divisions of 6 will be a straight forward play each other twice affair, while the divisions of 8 will involve each team playing each other once, then the top 4 and bottom 4 splitting off for the second round of games. This means that all divisions are still made up of 10 games in the season.

The reason why I’ve decided to do it this way this time, where previously the bottom division was the one that had 8 teams, is that it means that in the two divisions of 8, when we do the split the teams in the bottom half still have something to play for, namely avoiding relegation!

Hope that all makes sense, if there’s any questions, feel free to ask!

NEW TUESDAY & SUNDAY LEAGUES

We’ve got two new leagues starting before the end of February, so if you’re looking to get yourselves signed up, here’s what we can do…

TUESDAY LEAGUE

Our new Tuesday league season starts NEXT WEEK, 31st January. We currently have just ONE SPACE AVAILABLE, so if you’re keen to get going, this could be your best bet. Tuesday league games kick off at either 8pm or 9pm each week.

SUNDAY LEAGUE

Our biggest league night is currently scheduled to start a new season on 26th February. Our current league is full at 26 teams, but for the new season we could look to extend our capacity to 30 teams. We have a couple of former teams who are looking to get back into, which (if our maths are correct) means we are looking at having TWO SPACES AVAILABLE. Games kick off between 5pm and 8.40pm, and we can try and accommodate any teams who struggle for the earlier or later games. We also try to be flexible around issues that specifically affect Sunday evenings, including United and City games.

All of our Reddish league games are 50 mins long, priced at £5 per player, per game.

For more details or to register your team, get in touch via the ‘Join A League’ section of the website

SK BALLERS 2023

So there goes another year…

Into 2023 we go, so it’s time to let you know about some exciting new things we’ve got coming up!

But first, a quick personal one. As we hit 2023, with a now mobile 15 month old boy in the house, and a wife who now has to work Fridays, it’s worth noting that you may struggle to get a reply off me throughout the day on a Friday as I try and find ways to keep him entertained. We don’t have leagues that day, so nothing should be particularly urgent, but this is a change in my own circumstances that I think teams need to be aware of. I was able to run the business without any real restrictions on my time for the first 5 years, but as things stand I’m putting a lot of scope on doing the majority of my admin work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as they are the days when Charlie is in nursery. I’m aware that teams who are cancelling games might not be getting a response from me, and that I’ve become a lot slower at replying to teams sometimes, for which I apologise. Given how much I’m relying on teams replying to me to allow me to run my business smoothly, I’m aware of the hypocrisy!

In exciting news, we should be just days away from the initial launch of our new website! In fact, this should be the final article we post on the website in it’s current form. We’ve got big plans for the website going forward, but we’ll take it one step at a time.

We will be continuing to catch up with our offer of free shirts to reward team loyalty at the rate of two teams a month, so if you’ve been playing a little while keep your eye on our updates on our socials to find out when you’re due (we may switch that to the new website when it’s launched).

We may even look at our options for advancing leagues into other areas of Stockport in 2023 if the website plays it’s part in automating some of the administration that takes up a fair amount of our time.

Who knows where we’ll be this time in 12 months…

And of course, if you don’t currently play in one of our leagues and you want to get involved, or if you do currently play but would like to play more, get in touch and lets see what we can do.

As always, thanks to all of you who have taken part in our leagues over the last 12 months, and all the best for 2023!

Mike

Woodley Thursday Update

Hi guys, a quick update on how the current Thursday league is looking.

Generally, it hasn’t been great! Holidays, the return of the 11’s season, injuries, illness etc have meant that most teams have had spells this season where they have struggled to field a side. No one’s fault, just one of them things.

We’ve also had 6 teams drop out since the start of the season, and although we have teams lined up to come back in in the near future, I’m desperate to get this season finished as soon as possible. From my point of view, going to three divisions has been a mistake. Divisions of 6 are more affected by teams dropping out and cancelling, and it means we have fewer options for getting league fixtures on when teams cancel, so we will be returning to two bigger divisions for the new season. Three divisions of 6 does have it’s place, but this wasn’t the right time.

Over these next few weeks we’d appreciate as much patience as possible from our teams. Once the titles are decided in each division we will end the season and get the new one started. Obviously we still have our pitch fees to pay (the agreement with Life Leisure is that if we have any games on we have to pay our pitch costs in full), so we’d appreciate teams taking up the option of a friendly on the weeks where we can’t get you a league game

Here’s a quick breakdown of how the individual leagues are currently looking.

Premiership

In the last few weeks, Inter Yanan have dropped out, leaving us with 5 teams. Unfortunately, one team had played them twice, a few teams had played them once, and one team hadn’t played them at all. This means it would be unfair on those teams who’ve played them to give the other teams a forfeit win, so we will remove the results for those games and the season will be an 8 game season.

Championship

GX FC dropped out early on in the season and were replaced, Surf On Turf dropped out a few weeks ago and TNF have dropped out this week. We do have some teams due to return (GX FC being one), but the title looks like it is pretty much decided so the games that get played in the next few weeks might not make that much difference to the final league table.

League One

We had a team drop out before the season started, and The Fellas dropped out without playing a game. Stockport Athletic took one of the spaces, but they also dropped out last week. CS FC have moved over from the Wednesday league this week, but as with the Championship, it looks likely that the title will be decided in the next couple of weeks.

Again, thanks for your patience in recent weeks, it’s not been ideal. We will hopefully have the new season starting as soon as possible, probably early October.

JOIN A LEAGUE TODAY!

It’s a brave headline, as spaces are pretty limited, but if you’re looking at getting involved in a 6-a-side league in the near future, here’s where we can fit you in!

REDDISH SUNDAY

Championship: One Space

League Two: One Space

REDDISH TUESDAY

New league starts 6th September – Limited spaces…

REDDISH WEDNESDAY

One space available – new season starts 24th August!

WOODLEY THURSDAY

League One – One Space

And that’s your lot! For details or to register your team, call or text 07809252658, email skballers@hotmail.com, or message is through any of our social media pages!

BRAND NEW SUNDAY LEAGUE – THE FORMAT

So, we were extremely pleased to be able to be able to return to 4 divisions for the start of the new Sunday league which kicks off this weekend, and we know a lot of the new teams are reliable as they have been playing friendlies for weeks. Happy days!

But then more teams kept getting in touch wanting to get involved for the new season, so at the end of the current season we were left with 26 teams for 24 slots, and in the last couple of days we’ve had a couple more enquire about joining up. We find it very hard to say no to people, so here’s the plan…

We are still going to have 4 divisions. The top two divisions will be made up of 6 teams playing each other twice (nice and straightforward). The bottom two divisions will be made up of 8 teams. Each team will play each other once, then the top 4 and bottom 4 will be split with the teams in each half playing each other a second time. Both formats make it a 10 week season. We know we will have to add weeks on for games missed, especially as April contains City v Liverpool at 4.30pm on Sunday April 10th and Easter Sunday on 17th April.

As we also don’t want to have to start games at 4.30pm or 9pm, we are having a play with the kick off times, and this is very important. Where we have previously fit a 50 minute game into an hour long slot, we are now going to be fitting them into a 55 minute slot. This means there is NO SCOPE FOR GAMES RUNNING OVER IF TEAMS ARE LATE. If your game kicks off late it will still need to finish by the time of the kick off time of the next game.

The new kick off times are going to be as follows:

5pm, 5:55pm, 6:50pm, 7:45pm and 8:40pm

Once your game is done, please vacate the pitch as quickly as you can so the next game can get kicked off, out of respect to the other teams.

We are so grateful to be having to work out a problem of this nature. To have too many teams is something we could only have dreamed of, and though we got to 5 divisions last summer we know a lot of that was down to the release from lock down meaning everyone wanted to play. To get back to those team numbers is a vindication for the work we put in, and in no small part an indication of the quality of our referees, as teams wouldn’t stick around if our refs weren’t up to scratch!

We can’t wait to get going for the new season. Let’s have a good one!