Full steam ahead

After reduced fixture lists in the past two weeks, it is full steam ahead as the Gray Hooper Holt Mid Sussex Mid Sussex Football League provides full fixtures lists from this coming Saturday (7 September). Despite a disturbing decline nationally in the 11 v 11 game the League has managed to maintain the number of teams and increased the number of clubs since the Crawley & District Football League was dissolved at the end of the 2009 - 2010 season, after which most of that League’s clubs opted to move to the Mid Sussex League to play their football. This season sees 140 teams of 79 clubs competing in the League’s fourteen divisions and twelve Saturday challenge cup competitions while the Fred Pretty Veterans Cup, the only competition of its type in Sussex which this year has an entry of 28 teams in an area extending from South Godstone in the north to Brighton in the south with the clubs drawn in four groups and each playing approximately one group match a month until February when the competition goes into the quarter-final knockout stage

Alhough no longer at Step 7 in the FA National League System, a status which the it is aiming to resume, the League is able to maintain a presence in the biennial FA Inter-League Cup and, after going under to Jersey the eventual winners in St Helier two years ago, the representative team has a somewhat shorter journey when it travels to Shoreham a week Saturday (14 September) to meet the Brighton, Hove & District League in a preliminary round tie in the competition commencing at 2pm. If successful, manager Richard Nelson’s squad will travel again in the first round where it will meet the Herts Senior League in mid-October.