Saturday leagues lose a fifth of teams

League News

The late withdrawal of 5 teams from the Saturday League reduced the total number of teams to 51 playing this year. We have updated our tables covering 14 Saturday leagues and this shows that over a third of the teams who completed the 2019 season in the Huddersfield Saturday League no longer play in the league. No one would be surprised if even more teams pulled out before the season progressed much further.

The Huddersfield League wasn't the only Saturday League to be hit with late team withdrawals as 3 others we are aware of also lost teams in the lead up to the start of the season. The worst affected was the Sheffield Parks League where they lost a further 6 teams taking the total number of the teams in the competition from 65 down to 47. The Saturday Leagues in Leeds and Saddleworth also each suffered a late extra team withdrawal to reduce their numbers which are all included in the revised table below. In total over 20% of the total number of teams have been lost to Saturday bowling across all 14 leagues, not a healthy statistic.