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THE SUNDAY LEAGUE TEAM WHO HAVE BEEN |
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ARCHIVE CHAIRMAN'S BLOGS FROM PREVIOUS SEASONS |
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CHAIRMAN’S BLOG - Season 2025-2026 Review |
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Despite losing 6 out of There were 10 teams in Division Two for 2025-2026, which is the ideal number when several Cup competitions including County Cups are allowed to be entered, but we suffered a narrow 1-0 defeat in our first League game at Home to London Football School on Pitch 3 at Enfield Playing Fields, a regular Home pitch which we had to return to for this season with Saturday AFA club Southgate Olympic now ‘owning’ Clowes Sports Ground in being keyholders and banning all adult mens Sunday League 11-a-side teams from playing over there after they had ‘churned the pitches up too much’ the previous season, this also being the case with every other local AFA club in the Borough of Enfield, leaving their pitches free for their own Youth, Womens & Veterans teams to use instead. At least we did have some positive news on the sponsorship front though with Player-Manager Josh Wakeford managing to secure a free black & white ‘Away’ kit from Skechers which we wore for the first time in that London Football School match, while Hermosa Protein sponsored another Skechers kit in green & white (with the same design) for our new Home kit. That sponsorship was only for a set of shirts though, so black shorts were worn with this new kit while former Manager Trevor Hughes kindly sponsored a set of green socks for everybody. We then had a rare team photo taken by talkSPORT’s well-known Non-League ‘groundhopping’ reporter Tony Incenzo the following Sunday when we played new team Sparta Finchley on their 3G pitch at Laurel Park School, a ground which Tony had not visited before, and one that we had never played on before. Thankfully we fielded what turned out to be the strongest side we managed to put out all season, scoring some excellent goals in a 6-2 victory, and we then had four more good results in the League up until the end of October, drawing with AFC Oakwood and Omonia Youth Seconds and also beating a heavily-funded Karakocan side two weeks running, the second of those victories being our best performance of the season with a 3-0 Away win at Edmonton County School, the venue where our club was formed 50 years ago. That is also now a 3G pitch of course, run by Powerleague, and with two other good performances on that type of surface during the season…a 4-2 win Away to Sparta Finchley in the London Cup and an unlucky 2-1 defeat to Omonia Youth Seconds on the last day of the season…, a large number of our players asked if we could get a 3G venue to use as our own Home pitch for Season 2026-2027, which is of course impossible because they are invariably snapped up for Sunday morning (and early afternoon) use by clubs running multiple Youth & Womens teams as soon as a new one is built. Apart from the matches already mentioned, we only had two other victories during the rest of the season, namely a 4-2 win Away to local rivals AFC Edmonton and a 3-2 win at Home to AFC Oakwood, a team who eventually finished third on 27 points while we finished second-from-bottom (and effectively ended up getting ‘relegated’) despite finishing only seven points behind them ! Indeed that 20 is the highest number of points any team finishing second from bottom in a 10-team division has ever managed in a division that we have been involved in throughout our 50-year history. It was a very competitive division with everybody evenly-matched and with no teams dropping out until they had played over 75% of their matches, therefore leaving the final League table intact for a change with no playing records expunged. Indeed we competed as well as anybody with our only defeat by more than a two-goal margin coming against eventual champions AFC Muswell Hill when Josh Wakeford was out injured and Sam Larner had to go in goal against a side who also ended up winning the London FA Sunday Junior Cup, which certainly proved how strong our division was. However, thanks to a number of players making themselves unavailable in the second half of the season due to injuries or other commitments, we did have to play several matches with a bare eleven or less and it would have been worse had a number of Whitewebbs Vets players not signed up to help us out when they did not have a match arranged. Josh’s Cousins James & Thomas Mason also helped us out when we were short in another match, travelling all the way down from Harpenden to do so, but more worryingly, we actually had to concede two of our League matches due to players choosing to go and watch Spurs and we were really fortunate that the League chose not to heavily fine us for those ‘non-fulfilments’. We really cannot have that happening again, and we will just have to sign up more players who do not support Spurs (or Arsenal) if going to watch them on a Sunday is more important than actually playing in a competitive game of football. Ultimately it was those two matches where we failed to field a team that saw us remain where we are in Division Two for the coming 2026-2027 Season while all the other teams in our division who finished above us were promoted to Division One. All things considered though, we have to remember that we played with an average age of just 20 throughout the 2025-2026 Season in a standard that is ‘miles’ better than what our team of the late-70’s/early-80’s with the same average age were playing in in Division 5 of the Edmonton Sunday League in the 1980-1981 season when they too struggled in the lower half of the table after winning Division 8 the season before to subsequently get themselves promoted three divisions. We have never fielded teams with an average age of only 20 at any other time in our history. When the Beedens, Beasleys, Dorwards and their friends played as teenagers in the early-1990’s, we had several much older players in the team as well and we were also playing in Division Five of the Waltham Sunday League, which again was much weaker than Division Two of the Barnet Sunday League is now. Looking forward to the 2026-2027 Season, thankfully we have managed to find a temporary new Home pitch at the Holtwhites Sports & Social Club next to Gordon Hill Station in North Enfield, sharing it on alternate Sundays with Whitewebbs Vets. Although it costs approximately £120 per match and we cannot start using it until October due to cricket taking priority over there, we now have changing rooms, showers, toilets and use of the clubhouse while we will not have to put the nets up either. This should help to attract good new players to the club and also make them want to turn up and play, unlike at Enfield Playing Fields where the various car parks over there often get broken into by large groups of travellers with their caravans and the changing rooms & toilets have been boarded up for the past two seasons…until somebody buys the lease that is on offer to take a chance and develop it into a café similar to the recently-built ones at various other London Borough of Enfield open spaces. Unfortunately though, we only have the use of Holtwhites for one season with Womens football being given priority at that venue for the season after, so we will have to hope that Enfield Council have something suitable for us to use when we are looking for a pitch again in August 2027. When I attended the Barnet Sunday League’s AGM in June, a number of other Club Secretaries were asking the League Committee if they knew of any pitches available for them to use, as the majority of their players were simply not prepared to play on the only remaining Enfield Council pitches left available for open-aged adult mens 11-a-side at Enfield Playing Fields and Firs Farm, both of which have no changing rooms, showers or toilets. Unfortunately the League couldn’t help them due to the problems I have already mentioned with Womens, Youth & Veterans football now being given priority at private venues and on 3G pitches. Even if England had won the World Cup in the USA this Summer, it would not have encouraged more people to start playing adults 11-a-side (as happened back in 1966) simply because local Councils, and especially Enfield, can no longer afford to maintain their changing facilities due to constant ‘anti-social behaviour’ and vandalism. In Enfield’s case, I was told at the Barnet League’s AGM that the London FA cannot fund improvements because Enfield Playing Fields is not situated in a London postcode, while the Middlesex FA cannot fund anything either because Enfield Playing Fields is situated in a London Borough. How ridiculous is that ?!! Unlike top-level professional football in the UK where worn-out muddy pitches are a thing of the past, facilities for adult men’s Sunday League clubs have gone backwards since the 1970’s, particularly over the last 10 years. When we first used Hazelwood Sports Ground in Palmers Green as our Home ground in 1984, there was a park-keeper working there full-time, opening up the changing rooms and toilets, marking the pitches out, regularly cutting the grass and even rolling the pitches. Other local Council pitches in Enfield, Barnet & Haringey also had the same. Their excuse for making those park-keepers completely redundant in the early-2000’s (after their working hours had been turned into opening up the changing rooms for weekend matches only during the 1990’s) was that ‘people didn’t want to play Sunday football any more’ because the Premier League had started playing matches on Sundays and also having other things to do thanks to the advent of the internet. While that was partly true, far more damaging was the improvement of facilities for professional football because Sunday League players expected the same for themselves, but it has never happened. This has been picked up on by various social media influencers who focus on grassroots football, with one of them (rootz_tv) not surprisingly posting a ‘short’ on his channel where he claims Sunday League 11-a-side is ‘dead’ and small-sided football is the way to go. In his opinion, that is because all the well-known East & South London You Tube teams from the last few years have now either folded or gone into Saturday football at Step 6, but also because, like his own Rootz TV 7-a-side League at Trent Park (in Enfield), small-sided Leagues are now being heavily sponsored and played for quite substantial prize money. In addition to that, they are now increasingly being played on Sundays from 12.00 mid-day instead of midweek evenings, therefore attracting numerous players who would previously have played 11-a-side in the Barnet Sunday League but would now rather play for money, social media exposure and of course far superior facilities with the Trent Park Fives Centre, Powerleague at Edmonton Playing for prize money is probably the biggest problem though, as it almost forces all Sunday League 11-a-side teams to allow their players to play for free and in a lot of cases actually pay them per match on a level with Step 4, 5 & 6 clubs from Saturday football. They also need to be playing their Home games either on a 3G pitch or a private ground, otherwise they will not have enough interested players and they will invariably end up folding, quite often half-way through a season. This was the main topic of conversation amongst Club Secretaries at the AGM and most of them were admitting that their teams are now run on that basis but they were fortunate to have big sponsorships to pay for it. A lot of those sponsorships were from the players themselves where some had a lot more money than others depending on their jobs or their family backgrounds, so they would subsidise their team-mates, particularly if that team-mate was a top Step 4-6 player from Saturday football who would win them the League if they paid him x amount per match to turn up every week. Another problem is that it has been well-publicised lately that school-leavers and University graduates in the 16-23 age group are really struggling to find jobs, so quite a number of them rely on playing Semi-Pro football on Saturdays & Tuesdays and then using social media to increase their income from that. They are no longer prepared to play Sunday League 11-a-side or even small-sided football unless they get paid. They simply cannot afford to. There are other factors that have dictated a drop-off in adult mens Sunday League 11-a-side participation though, certainly as far as our club are concerned. We are finding now that once players reach 18, a lot of them want to do other things because they have been playing competitive Youth football non-stop since they were 5 years old. Myself and my younger brother Trevor didn’t do that. We just had kickabouts over the park until we were in our late teens and then formed Edmonton Rovers, so playing competitive football was new to us and something we really looked forward to every Sunday. Then there’s players getting steady girlfriends at a younger age, something which stopped a number of our players from playing on a regular basis during the 2025-2026 Season. Nowadays, girlfriends are often met on social media instead of in a local nightclub and many are from ‘up North’, so our players go up there to see them most weekends. This never used to happen back in the pre-internet days of the 1990’s when our 18-25 age group players all used to go out clubbing locally down the Polo Club and didn’t settle down with steady girlfriends until they were in their mid/late-20’s. Another problem is Valentines Day and Mothers Day both being much more of a thing today than they were back in the 70’s, 80’s & 90’s thanks to social media bombarding everyone with adverts to take the girlfriend/other half/mother away for the weekend instead of playing football. Over the past few seasons we have had a large number of players missing matches for that reason. These are all real challenges for us as we go into our 51st Season, but we are hopeful that our planned 50th Anniversary Dinner on Friday 18th September (2026) will give us some added publicity and increased sponsorship that will enable us to overcome these problems and continue for a few more years yet. |
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our last 7 matches (including Friendlies) at the end of Season 2024-2025 thanks to injuries and players drifting away to do other things, we still managed to finish third in Division Four of the Barnet Sunday League, gaining promotion to Division Two for the 2025-2026 Season. However, that promotion was mainly due to other teams folding right throughout the League, meaning there were two divisions less for 2025-2026 in total with most of the remaining teams having been moved up at least one division anyway.
County School and other local small-sided venues all having 3G pitches, plush changing facilities, toilets and a café and ample car parking right next to those pitches.