League Statement – Covid Update

ESFL League Statement

The government and FA announced on Monday 22nd February that organised sport could re-start at the end of March. Since the announcement we have awaited guidance from the FA before providing an update to our members.

Although organised sport can re start at the end of March with no tiered restrictions we should be encouraged to stay local if at all possible.

We have through no fault of their own quite a lot of our teams who have been unable to play any games yet due to restrictions placed on them by the government, Lockdowns and FA guidelines.

Despite restriction slowly being lifted we appreciate that all Emergency Services are still heavily impacted by the virus and may still be unable to fulfil fixtures.

One other major impact on our decision is that the Welsh Government are yet to provide a road map out of lockdown thus there is currently no return date for grassroots sport in Wales. At present no teams in the South West & Welsh league have been able to play any fixtures and only one fixture has been played in the North West League. (This league contains three Welsh teams).

As much as we would all love to crack on and play, there is no way we can continue and complete this ESFL season without it causing disruption for at least the next two seasons.

Some teams still have 6 group games to play, we would usually give 5/6 months for these to be played, even halving that time followed by the knockouts would take a minimum of 6 months from now to complete the competition and that is if there are no interruptions or delays.

Meaning we wouldn’t finish until October at the earliest, this would then push us back for season two and possibly even season three.

We haven’t made this decision lightly but as many teams have yet to start, season 20/21 is to be Nil and void, we will begin season one of the ESFL again at the start of August 2021.
You are all already in your regional what’s app groups and able to begin planning games for when we start again should you wish to do so.

We would like to carry out the same league format as we initially planned where 32 teams will qualify for the knockout stages. The group stages are to begin in August and finish by the end of December 2021 which gives you five months.

All your registration fees will just carry over so there are no fees to pay, we will just simply start again. We will again try to get you free or at least discounted player insurance from our partner Sportsguard but we will contact you in due course regarding this. Please make sure you are all FA Affiliated again and you are good to go.

There were some teams who registered late last year who we placed in groups away from where they are based just so they could take part in the ESFL, we hope with the teams on the waiting list we can rearrange the groups slightly meaning teams will play in their local areas to minimise travel even more.

Registration will re open as from now for new teams and close at the end of May when we will put each team into their group for the coming season.

We will put you back into the competition so you do not need to do anything at this stage and you will receive updates in due course with any changes in your groups and important dates.

Once again we would like to thank you all for your continued support and positive comments throughout this difficult first year. We tried to make it work but it ended up time just got the better of us and rather than disrupt future seasons we made the difficult decision to delay the start for a few months.

If you have any questions in the meantime please don’t hesitate to contact us via email – info@esfl.co.uk

Stay safe and have a great summer, hopefully starting a fresh in August with no lockdowns will enable us to begin the best Emergency services league in the world !!.

Finally, Interest in the Euro competition has been very high, we can take a maximum of 20 teams so as soon as you have your numbers confirmed please send us an email to guarantee your place.

The deadline is 15th March however we may close registration prior to this should we fill all spaces.