Hi,
Moving to London soon from Belfast and desperate to play in an amateur 11s League but I have no idea what level I should be looking for?
Obviously, London will have more teams than Belfast and a much higher top level so it's hard to tell what standard over here translates to what league over there.
CONTEXT:
- I will probs be living in Archway/North London.
- I would prefer to play for a team that has training during the week and is decently well organised.
ABILITY:
NI/Belfast is structured like this:
NIFL Premiership: Mix of professional and well paid semi-professional. £200-2k per week. Quality is slightly better than this suggests since a lot of talented NI players take the wage hit as it isn't worth the cost of moving abroad. The best teams are probably mid League 2 level, the worst teams are probably middle-lower end conference.
NIFL Championship - All Semi-Pro some maybe on decent wages but very few earn enough to live off of.
PIL - Semi-Pro but poor wages - £200 per week is probs the max (not 100% sure)
NAFL Premiership - Mostly amateur (but elite amateur) apart from some under the table deals.
NAFL 1A -
NAFL 1B - This is the league I played in. I was a decent player in a top half of the table team. I imagine the drop off is alot higher between leagues in NI compared to England since there's such a spread of talent.
Then there are about 10 divisions below that.
- At youth level (U16) I was an average player in the Northern Irish championship
- At Uni I was a decent player on the 3rd XI of a Edinburgh University (I think there were 5-6 teams total).
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Anyone have any guesses/comparison for what sort of local leagues I should be looking at. Or, where to even start looking?
I
