BEING in charge of one of the area’s up-and-coming football leagues must be a challenging job.

Chairman of the Bolton, Bury and District League, Warren Barlow writes a weekly column in The Bolton News giving his views on the issues affecting grassroots sport.

This week he talks about organisation and trying to set up an exciting initiative which will hopefully be a success – summer league football.

THIS weekend was spent compiling a fixture programme for the summer league which commences on May 16, across three sites with nine five-a-side pitches and an eight-a-side pitch at Moss Bank FC.

These 10 pitches will cater for 40 teams kicking off from 9am with age ranges of u7s and u8s and four U11s teams.

Then 40 more teams which comprise of u7s and u8s and on this occasion four u12s teams kick off the later session at 11.30am.

We then have nine six-a-side pitches at New House Farm which will cater for 72 teams at u9s and u10s over two sessions similar to those at Moss Bank.

Finally, we have five eight-a-side pitches at Harper Green which will cater for 40 teams of u11s and u12s across the two sessions.

Each pitch has four teams allocated and each will play round robin, festival football with a guaranteed minimum of three games each.

Week One is a preliminary week where we look to see if we have the groups, timings and logistics right before the grand opening of the summer league at Bolton Wanderers Academy on May 23 when all the teams will have the opportunity to play at this fantastic facility.

We would like to offer our gratitude to those who have helped to make this happen including Bolton Wanderers, Kevin Davies and every one of the teams and clubs who have supported this inaugural event.

n Warren will return next week with his column but in the meantime check out his views on twitter on @bbdjfl.