- The 2nd cup competition runs Jan to March and is a little different in structure to the League cup competition earlier in the season. The weeks to be included will be shown in the Diary when known. The weeks may be adjusted depending on frequency of replays. You will be made aware of the prizes (winner and runner up) when the number of entries are known. As a minimum you could cover your seasons costs if you win this cup competition. A trophy is also available to the winner of this competition.
- A date is selected for the start of the competition, usually in the first week of the new year
- The overall table after this set of games is then split into two. The top half will compete against each other as will the bottom half. This ensures someone from the bottom half of the league will reach the final (any movement in the league from bottom half to top and vice versa from then on is irrelevant).
- A random draw takes place for the preliminary round to get the teams/competitors down to 32 or 16 (depending on the number of entries). If one match is required it will be taken from the top half of the draw/table, if 2, one from each, if 3, two from the top and one from the bottom and so on.
- Once completed a mapping table will be produced and you can plot your route to the final (there will be no need for any further draws). For eg round 1 (with 32 players) may commence in the top half of the draw with the player in 1st against the player in 16th, 2nd v 15th, 3rd v 14th etc, taking into account any losers in the preliminary round. Similarly the bottom half would consist of 17th v 32nd, 18th v 31st etc again taking into account any losers in the preliminary round.
- As in the league cup it is simply your result against your opponent, this time all games will be split by pts, goal difference, goals scored in that order. Replays would only take place if scores exactly matched and are clearly less likely to happen than the earlier cup competition.
- Weeks where there are international or FA cup matches (except the 3rd round of the FA Cup) will not be used for the cup games.
- Results will be published at the same time as the league results as soon after the weekends games as possible.
- It sound complicated but in practice is very straightforward !
- It does not matter how you are doing in the league, in theory you could lose your match in a particular week and still progress to the next round as your opponent lost worse than you. Similarly you could win but get knocked out. You could check out your opponents team and even make tactical transfers.
Good luck.
