In just under 3 weeks we'll be embarking on our inaugural post-MvF season. The pitch, time, and players might be staying the same, but some things are changing.
Teams - depending on how many we have actually signed up on day 1, we might need to switch the teams up a bit. I'm open to suggestions on how we do that if it becomes necessary. We've noticed a drop off in the numbers at MvF over recent weeks, and I'm hopefully putting that down to the fact that there have been some specific football matches going on on TV, holidays, and simply apathy brought on by the fact MvF is finishing. I'm hoping this doesn't carry through to the new season.
Rules - We'll largely be keeping the same rules as previous MvF seasons, however with a couple of changes. These include score changes (to cope with our new league site's scoring constraints), bonus point-to-goal conversions to emphasise weight loss achievements, as well as certain pitch rules such as being able to hit first-time volleys or headers inside the box from corners. These are designed to make things a little more simple to manage from an administrative perspective as well as switch things up on the pitch.
Rules, as they stand, are available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VBv-M4Eb9PE9n_VZkOLG7n9SKcAzb3XE8d16uQow48w/edit?usp=sharing
Registrations - I just want to clarify registrations versus memberships to avoid any misunderstanding. As things stand we have 2 areas that a player can (and needs to) sign up to. League Lobster is the site that allows us to assign players, put them in teams, and collate the scores both for weight loss and pitch goals. This is purely a scoring mechanism and has no financial output.
BuyMeACoffee (used due to the lower commission structure for now) is the site where players need to sign up to, prior to 14th May, to be eligible to come along and play. This is a donation-based site, so you can do that as well, but the memberships (2 tiers are available currently) have been setup specifically to allow easy monthly payments without the need to chase. We're not a huge organisation with administrators and credit control, so we needed something simple, that puts the responsibility on each and every one of us to make sure payments are made.
I can't stress this enough; you can sign up for membership now, but it will be a recurring monthly fee, therefore my suggestion is to make sure you sign up around 7th May, when MvF finishes. That allows enough time to gauge player numbers and make decisions on teams, etc.
League Lobster sign up: https://scheduler.leaguelobster.com/o/918655/tamworth-fat-football/
BuyMeACoffee memberships: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Tamworthfootie
Referrals - Whilst the plan is to continue with the Tamworth members from MvF, there will be some attrition at some point, so if we can have a few more players joining to offset that, that would be great. I know a number of you have contacts with other MvF clubs, and other friends that might be interested, so feel free to sound them out if a Sunday game at Tamworth suits them better.
1 word of caution however; MvF has strict T&Cs about creating competing organisations so we're attempting to fly under that radar, keep ourselves small, but known, in order to continue doing what we all wanted which is weigh-in, lose weight (or fat more specifically), support each other, and play football!
Everything else will take care of itself.