Welcome to the GW1 REVIEW
BANG A GONG
GET IT ON
Whoosh what an opening weekend that was. Bang a Gong and we are off. Goals all over the shop. The season is officially underway and if it carries on like this weekend then we are in for a treat. Before we get to the business of reviewing the opening GW we have a little housekeeping.
Firstly, thanks to all the new players for joining us this season and also thanks to all those who are back with us again.
At the time of writing we have approximately 290 teams in the league, however I say approximately as there are quite a few non payers. We renewed the league so everyone who was in before was automatically re entered when they set their team up. All non payers have had at least one email and a whatsapp chase (if we have their number). If you are reading this and haven’t yet paid then suggest you do so ASAP.
We will be removing any non payers we have not heard back from this week, and we are aiming to confirm prize money early next week. The number of teams will be reduced, hopefully not by too much but that will depend how many non payers come forward. We will have more news on the total prize money soon.
We have 77 in our CONTS league which again is a record. We have just announced the eviction plan on the CONTS 2022 page. Make sure you are following us on Twitter or in one of our Facebook or WhatsApp groups to keep up with the latest news.
Our new H2H divisions were also a success, we have 3 divisions full with 19 players in each (Mr Average makes it up to the full 20). We can also confirm that 3 teams will be relegated/promoted at the end of each season (ignoring Mr Average that will remain in place). The prize pot is £190 for each division which means prizes of £100 for 1st place, £60 for 2nd place and £30 for 3rd. Tim McEwan will be the admin for the H2H Premier, Donald Macaulay is the admin for the Championship and James Page Chatton is the admin for League One, they will post the fixtures and results each week in the WhatsApp group. We have also set up a new H2H divisions page on this site where you can find this info during season.
With that done let’s BANG A GONG and GET IT ON with the review.
For those that are new to the league there will be a weekly review, this one is by yours truly but dont worry we have a crack team of guest writers to keep you amused and informed as we go.
The review will focus on the action in the league and will confirm the best GW score each week which goes on to the Best GW Score page. At the end of the season the highest scores will win prizes. You do not have to sumbit these to us as in previous seasons.
At the end of each month we will also announce the Manager of the Month (MOTM) and update the MOTM page
There will also be a section in each review that confirms who is getting evicted from the CONTS league. Find out the latest on the CONTS page.
Oh and every review has a theme tune, which goes into a season playlist that you can follow/listen to.
Let’s GET IT ON
It was an opening weekend like no other I can remember. Goals everywhere, the 2 big premium picks both going big and plenty of other popular assets also starting well meant big scores, everywhere, humongous in fact. In all my years of playing I can not recall a start like it. An incredible 55 FFUKers went straight into the hundred club at the very first opportunity so congratulations and an early season shout out to all those below:
Stevie Fielden, Nick Johns, Elliott Hodgeon, James Simpson, Tim McEwan, Ameet Shah, Neil Goodwin, Philip Redgrave, Ashley Mather, Lewis Bell, Reece Cook, James Downie, Nick Maston, Steven Paterson, Rob Pitt, Kevin Flynn, Roni Friel, Clayton Deakin, John Stevens, Kevin Ryan, Joseph Colliass, Simon Pascoe, Ben Beill, Grant Lawrie, Marcus Blowers, David Harrison, Andrew Hamilton, James Amar, Stuart Allen, Kevin O’Reilly, Darren McKeown, Robert Simpson, Ben Wright, Chris Brophy, Matt Reid, Donald Macaulay, Shane Newton, Bernard Perry, Darryl James, Dan Hepworth, Chris Smith, Tina Whitehouse, John Parkinson, Will Johnson, Kushal Shah, John Harper, Yousif Josh, Mark Harrison, David Conway, Tom Newman, Daron Russell, Dave Cull, Zac Cox, Karl Austen AND Dave Windsor you all smashed it!
How did they all amass these points? Well perhaps the Kings of GW1 can give us an idea.
The two most owned players were the top scorers so that goes some way to explaining the massive totals. Elsewhere it was a mix of some popular picks like Antonio and Benrahma and some much less popular picks like Dennis and Chalobah. But plenty of food for thought and price changes have already begun – note to self I must resist making early moves however tempting it might be.
Onto the FFUK league table, in the olden days league tables werent published until 6 games had been played but nowadays its all the rage to show them early doors, so please find below the FFUK top 20 after GW1, this is where you want to be at the end of GW38. The road is long…
Some incredible scores as mentioned but the biggest congratulations go to Stevie Fielden, Nick Johns and Elliott Hodgeon who all top scored with 113 points. Incredible skills from the off. I don’t need to tell you they all owned Salah and Bruno and captained one of them!
We have updated the BEST GW SCORE page with these scores and will keep this updated throughout the season.
Moving swiftly on, well done for making it this far, it is now time for our first eviction of the season…
We had to make the opening week as fair as possible so it was always going to be a single eviction whilst we worked out the plan for the rest of the season. With 77 in the league before we started that is going to take some dong but we are there, check out the CONTS page to see the latest eviction plan. Watch out in particular for GW10 and GW26!
But back to this week and it is a tough week to go out. Just ask Justin McCarthy who has been reminiscing about his early exit last season! This year it was tight, so tight it was a draw between Hadleigh Hobbs and Scott Hassell who both scored 38 points. With no overall rank to rely on it went to captain points which was also all square and then to bench points. Scott Hassell is safe by virtue of his 16 points on his bench so the first evictee is HADLEIGH HOBBS. Unlucky pal but now you can focus on the league!
Finally we go into Kloppage time and as you can imagine its been a busy time here at FFUK HQ, so thanks to all the admin crew for their help recently and I will be back in touch as soon as we have finalised the prize pot and we can announce the prize money for this season.
Let’s hope there is as much excitement in GW2.
Until then look after yourself and each FFUKer
Cheers
Chris (62nd)
FFUK 