In 1979 I started work in H.M. Naval Dockyard, Chatham (Kent) as a very young Clerical Assistant for the U.K. Ministry of Defence. The job was compiling statistics for the Navy Stores. Margaret Thatcher was a fairly new Prime Minister when the Dockyard and Stores were still in a culture of strong unions, and time & motion studies. The building stood on the site of the current Canterbury Christchurch University, Medway Campus, in what is now Chatham Maritime. I sat next to a chap called Glen Grunwell and we started discussing football. We were just out of school, and both football-mad.

In our lunchtimes we would sometimes play Subbuteo, for those not from the UK it's a table-top football game where you flick the players to move them and to pass and shoot. We spread it out on the floor behind our work desks and had some classic matches (I remember scoring a goal by flicking my attacker in such a way the ball lifted over Glen's wall and right into the back of the net). This was all fine until one day, without notice, some of the senior Dockyard managers dropped by for a random visit and there we were, Glen and me, on our hands and knees flicking plastic footballers around a felt-baize pitch! That didn't go down too well, though we were on our lunch break! We had football posters all over the wall behind us, I remember Glen's was covered with Liverpool squad photos.



We worked with a friendly group of people who had mostly come through the stores career route into clerical positions. In this semi-working class, semi-clerical world the talk nearly always revolved around football, especially on a Monday morning when the men would come in and say things like "I could've bet on that being 2-0" or "I could've told you they were going to win away". This got me thinking - why not prove how good we all were at forecasting ('predicting') scores of football matches? So in 1979 we started predicting games verbally to each other, before the weekend, then seeing how we'd done when we came back to work on Monday morning,

This was an era before computers, before the Premier League, and before betting options on specific scores or results (called 'Tipping' in some other countries.) Only the traditional Pools system existed, where punters tried to forecast scoring draws from the range of potential homes, aways and draws.

And so it began, with a trial period running for the last 10 weeks of the 1979-1980 season, including the F.A.Cup, which we predicted. I drew up a chart for names and points for each week (I still have that chart, which can be seen below.) We gained 1 point for a correct result (home, away or draw) and 2 points for an exact score (known since then as a maximum score, or 'maximum'), and 3 points for anyone who got the F.A.Cup result exact. We used English First Division games, the equivalent of the Premier League now. To give us an extra game, and a local interest, we included the local league side Gillingham FC. The trial was a success, with 14 finishers.



This was also the beginning of a trend - wherever I worked throughout my life, I absorbed or 'persuaded' fellow work colleagues to get predicting our great game of football. Until I worked for a company based in London, many years later in 2008, all my jobs were local, so the link to Gillingham FC always gave that added interest. Though I did work in Norway for some years before then and yet did not recruit any Norwegian work colleagues.




Though we say we started predictions in 1979, and we did - we needed to try out a full season. And so, the stage was set for the first ever FPA full season, though we didn't call it FPA back then. It was just 'the predictions' or 'the football predictions'.

We didn't know of any other system in existence, we just did it for ourselves, and for fun. For all we know, the FPA may be the oldest and longest running British predictions competition, possibly worldwide. The league began in earnest for 1980-1981 in an era of English dominance of the European Cup (Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa), Brian Moore and Jimmy Hill on TV, and players in shiny shirts, and short shorts. Most of the records from this era are lost, sadly. However I did keep some basic records, including the top four places and the highest scores of the season. We do know that the first proper season was won by John Burrluck, with Plymouth supporter Dave Evans as runner-up. Mark Grunwell was third and Mike Phillips fourth, two names that would both come to be regulars in the league.



Known finishers from the first full season, 1980-1981 (records lost for the rest of the table)
1 John Burrluck
2 Dave Evans
3 Mark Grunwell
4 Mike Phillips

We don't know how many entrants were in that league but it was between 10-20 predictors. High scores of the year came from John Burrluck, Dave Evans and an older chap called Bill Packer, who was the first person to rely heavily on 2-1 home scores. He used to say "if you put a row of twos and ones, many of them come up". This came to be known as 'The Packer Law' (see Predictions Theory on the Members page) and would be used by many in seasons to come, most notably by Mark Grunwell.



The 1981-1982 season saw a lot more interest in the league, with entrants now taking predicting as more than just fun but as virtually a science, or an art form. This year was also significant as it saw the introduction of competition in the form of a 'professional' forecaster: Peter Campling, representing The Sun newspaper. Since the newspapers used to give tips for the Pools, they needed pundits or tipsters. We took The Sun's forecasts and pitted his against the rest of us. At one stage the 1981-1982 season peaked with 21 people, though Bill Packer retired in February 1982 and the league settled at 20 members.

This season saw another new invention - a cup tournament where competitors went head-to-head with predictions based on the FA Cup, which we called (naturally enough), the FA Cup (and for a while the Football Predictors Cup). The first winner of the FA Cup was Brian Shrubsole, who also set a new high score record of 14 points in the league.



Unfortunately, the league was about to suffer a double blow, in the guise of the word 'Trident'. Trident was the new missile system for Britain's nuclear deterrent submarine force, designed to replace Polaris. For Britain and the M.O.D. to afford this, so the argument went, the Navy needed to make cuts and the sacrifice was to be the Chatham Dockyard, as decided by a minister called John Nott. Although the Dockyard wasn't due to close until 1984, the M.O.D. started offering staff new positions in other parts of the Civil Service. Mike and Glen left in 1981 and for a while, Chris Clarke continued to organise things but once Chris left in March 1982, we lost 8 from the league; this was in the days before email and we can only guess as to what may have happened. Bert Dale, our boss, was 11 points ahead with a success rate (or 'results' percentage) of 53.28 - in other words, he was getting more than 1 in every 2 predictions right.

Note: A few years ago, Glen Grunwell and I met for coffee in the Christ Church campus building, more than 30 years since we worked together on the same spot, and where the FPA was born. We did the draw for the Joyce Phillips League Cup.

The remaining 10 predictors soldiered on. Where many predictors had been based in the Dockyard office, the rest were a small band of brothers (and sisters) who used to meet at a Gillingham Church Youth Club on Friday nights: free snooker, darts, Subbuteo and a music system. We had a small school style exercise book to write the scores in, which I still own. That book has some funny entries in it, with predictors using such aliases as 'Ron Hillyard', the Gillingham FC goalkeeper of the time. This was the first year that anyone took notice of pure results, i.e. just points based on correct homes, aways and draws forecast, minus bonus points for maximums. Mark noticed that he had the best results performance, 10 results clear of Mike. The league actually produced a fabulous finish. Jamie 'Jeb' Muggridge came back from 11 points behind leader Mark Grunwell, and from 7th to 1st place, only to be pipped to the post by 2 points by Mark on the final week. Mark became the second winner of the league, and won the first of what was to be many title wins for him over the years.




The second blow came at the end of the season. With the Predictors scattered around and starting or changing careers, new interests and distractions in the form of relationships and new hobbies, the FPA ended after only two full seasons.






In September 1987, Mark Grunwell and Mike Phillips both lived in the same Gillingham Street (as did the Springates, hence the large contribution from the Grunwell, Phillips and Springate families over the years). Mike had just returned from working and travelling all summer in the USA. It was probably during a game of Subbuteo football, and certainly during a conversation at Mark's house, on 'the old predictions competitions', that Mark suggested reviving it. Mike and Mark agreed on the idea, then determined to get the league going again, and set about recruiting new members.



In the intervening years between 1982 and 1987, we had lost, sadly, Jamie 'Jeb' Muggridge who passed away in 1985 aged nearly 19. Also passed on was The Sun's tipster Peter Campling, replaced by Roy Bentley who continued to predict exact scores and not simply 1-2-X (homes, aways, draws) for the Pools, like the other newspapers.

So now we were able to continue including a professional, and with 7 other amateur predictors the league resumed (see Records for a write up of the 1987-1988 season). The FA Cup ran that season for the second time.

Four of the founder members from the first full season were there for what was to be the start of the second, and permament era of the FPA: Mike Phillips, Glen Grunwell, Joyce Phillips, Mark Grunwell.



A 1987 article in The Sun singing the praises of their 'Pools Tipster', superstar predictor Roy Bentley, alerted us to an interesting statistic. It said that Bentley was top of The Sporting Life's Tipster league for draws, with a success rate of 34.35% across all his draws predictions.


Mark Grunwell noted that 'pure results' of homes, aways, draws may be a better measure of predicting skill than exact scores. Mark had studied the previous seasons and noted that we could see how successful a predictor was based on their success percentage - for example, predict 1 week's fixtures of 10 games and get 5 correct results, equates to a 50% success rate. Also, if we ran a league on that basis, we could include more professionals such as newspaper tipsters who only forecast 1-2-X results, not exact scores like The Sun.

So for the start of the 1988-1989 season, the Results League was born. We had 9 amateurs and an impressive 10 professionals: from the newspapers, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times (Geoff Whitten), The Sunday People (David Prole), The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, The Sun (Roy Bentley) and The News of the World. Finally, there were two TV teletext tipsters, Oracle and Ceefax. The Roy Bentley article was significant, as it helped FPA to set benchmarks for performance: 33.33% and above in draws was now considered a good performance, and 50% for homes and aways. An overall success percent of 50%, known as 'The 50% Club' was the gold standard for Results League predictors.


This was also the launch year for a second cup competition, The League Cup, based on League Cup games and a pre-Christmas cup to compliment the FA Cup in the second half of the season (see Records for a write up of the 1988-1989 season)





In the late 1980s I was working for a subsidiary company of the old Lloyds Bank, Black Horse Life (later to become Black Horse Financial Services, or BHFS). Initially I didn't think to ask work mates to join, but after a couple of retirements from the 1988-1989 season, I asked two colleagues to join in 1989-1990: Mike Sherman (a Spurs fan) and Ian Humphries (a Liverpool fan who once got me a ticket for Liverpool against Man Utd in the League Cup, at Old Trafford). Their inclusion was innocuous at first but would soon lead to a BHFS league majority (takeover?) as by 1990-1991, nine of the 16 amateurs would be BHFS staff and their relations and friends (not counting me in any of these or subsequent BHFS stats). By 1991-1992, 13 of the 19 amateurs were BHFS-related, and that season would see an all-time peak of 20 Standard League predictors and 30 Results League predictors. BHFS would remain involved in the FPA until 2001, and between them would win 12 Major titles of four Leagues and eight Cups (see Records for all season write-ups). Sadly none of the great BHFS predictors from that era are still in the FPA; it would be good to have some of them back.

I then left BHFS in the summer of 1992, and Barry Roberts-Jones continued predicting and collecting predictions from BHFS regulars.



1992-93 turned into one of the strangest seasons ever. With Mike working abroad for summer and autumn of 1992, FPA competitions were run jointly by Mark Grunwell and Barry Roberts-Jones, but with a difference. They were not in contact much, so Mark ran a SL and RL with all the longer term predictors known to Mark (with Arron Springate as back up helper and checker of the league tables); while Barry ran a SL and RL for all the BHFS predictors. By the end of November, Mike had returned and the leagues were amalgamated, with Mark Grunwell emerging top of the SL of 18 predictors by 9 points, and he was also top of the RL of 29 predictors by 5 results.

But the season had another twist yet, with Mark's great rival of that time, Barry, closing the gap and by Christmas he was 3 points behind Mark in the SL and only 1 result behind him in the RL. By Boxing Day he had caught up, then early in the new year he missed a week, though he predicted - back then, FPA experimented with catch up games, no catch up games, and default games. This was a 'no catch ups' season and also a strict 2pm cut off for 3pm kick offs (no UK lunch time kick offs then) to allow the organisers to ensure all predictions were in on time. So now Barry was behind Mark again and wouldn't get those games back.


Barry then had a superb second half of the season and built a lead over Mark in both leagues, only for Mark to come back strong again and catch Barry by April. What a title race this was. Barry held out though, increased his lead again, and won the SL by 6 points from 8 fewer games than Mark; in the RL, he won by 4 results, from 8 fewer games (most people need all the games to beat Mark!). Barry was the only predictor to finish above 50%, and this was back in the days when that was hard to achieve, whereas today it has become quite normal. He also became the first person to finish with 50%, twice. More importantly, it was Barry's second league double of SL and RL in three years, so four league titles since his debut three years before.


That season also produced the strangest ever FPA cup. Mark, not in touch with Barry much (remember this was the age before email and Internet) didn't know who of BHFS was 'in' so for the League Cup, he made up the numbers from his league 'half' with friends from work. Paul Slater, a work colleague, became the winner in his one and only entry into an FPA competition. Sadly those records all appear to be lost now, so apart from two matches, we don't know how everyone else did in the earlier rounds.

One more interesting thing from that season. With the season starting on 22nd August and me not due to arrive home until 27th October (pre-Internet and email), I predicted the first nine weeks in advance, while working abroad (USA) and posted them home to Mark Grunwell. Needless to say not many points could be gleaned from such am ambitious ask (one of the weeks was nil points) but I managed to finish 6th and 7th in the leagues, in a large field.

Barry Roberts-Jones continued to compete in FPA until 2001. Some of his records and all time placings still stand today (2023). 22 years after he stopped predicting, Barry:

- is still in the top 10 title winners
- is still in the top 10 league winners
- is still in the top 10 for most seasons achieving 50% or more
- is one of only 7 members to have done the league double of SL and RL (twice, only 4 have managed two or more)
- is one of only 3 people to have won the SL in a debut season
- is the only person to have won the RL in a debut season

For the write up on Barry Roberts-Jones and his work for, and achievements in the FPA, go to the MEMBERS page and scroll down to FPA Honour Roll: Members Remembered.



Mike Phillips, Mark Grunwell and Arron Springate all had personal/home computers in the late 1980s (Mark an Amstrad; Mike and Arron, Amigas. Barry Roberts-Jones was also using an Amiga). It had long been a dream of the organisers to use a computer to automate predictions and all the competitions, instead of writing in predictions, match results and league tables by hand. And gradually, this took place, little by little, as computing power improved.

The first phase was to get the league tables semi automated, whereby points gained by members (worked out by hand) were entered into an early version of a spreadsheet and the league table calculated and sorted that way.

How did FPA function without computers? The old way it was done for years was members could phone in their predictions or hand in a written note through the door of FPA HQ, which was then the home of three predictors, organiser Mike Phillips, and parents Joyce and Ted Phillips, at 71 Carlton Avenue, Gillingham (the same street that some of the Grunwells lived in for a while, as well as the Springates). This was possible with so many members living in Gillingham or close by. Mum Joyce took the phone calls also, and both Mike and Joyce collected the predictions and wrote them onto a master sheet, then added the final scores and points, finally compiling SL/RL tables by hand. Copies of the tables were sent out to those members living slightly further away, but most members dropped by to see Mike, Joyce and Ted and looked at the tables. They knew what they had scored personally and where they were the previous week, so they could check the table for errors. That was all before we used even a spreadsheet for the league tables.

The best way of describing the history of computers and the FPA is to reproduce here what was written in the end of season reviews during the 1990s. For those of you who were there, it's a bit of a trip down memory lane and you will have seen how our ideas were often ahead of the computing power we had.

For our younger members, grown up in an age of decent computing power and anything you need from the football world available online within a few seconds, you may think some of this is like a foreign language! Remember, this was before any of us had Internet at home or at work. It also shows the rapid development of computing power in just the last two and a half decades.

Here then, begins the story of the rise of the machines in the FPA. It would take until 2012 when the long time dream of a computer based FPA was realised, thanks to Naz Rajan.

From the 1992-93 Review:
Computers rescue Organisers of Predictions Competitions
"Last season the first steps were taken to realise a long-term aim: to have the predictions fully automated (i.e. on computer) and cut out all the manual paperwork. The following details will appeal to those of you who use computers. Initial tests with a 640K 386PC (using Lotus 1-2-3) and a 1MB Amiga (using VIP, a Lotus imitator) showed that the predictions would need a larger spreadsheet than 1MB. The Standard League alone uses less than 1MB and is semi-automated for the Amiga. This saves a lot of time and is hopefully just the start of computer run leagues. The problem with VIP software however, is that it does not use the 'VALUE' command - an essential spreadsheet function - as does Lotus 1-2-3. Because Lotus is the software that will be used for the spreadsheet, we hope to set up on Mark Grunwell's 4MB 486 66 MHz PC (with a 200MB Hard drive), or my 9MB Amiga 2000 (with a 20MB HD) with a 386 PC Bridgeboard/emulator. This is a BIG job though, but we hope to convert by mid 93/94."

From the 1993-94 Review:
Computers to help run the Leagues
"For our predictors interested in computers - work is under way on the major project of converting the Leagues to full computer automation. Mark Grunwell spent a large part of last season designing an advanced spreadsheet with Lotus software. Trials will be continuing into the start of the 1994/95 season, with the programme eventually running on two 486 PCs. Otherwise, we will continue to operate a semi-automated system with new spreadsheets for an Amiga 500 and 2000, both with large memory upgrades. For those of you predicting in Division One, you will be competing against Poolswinner Gold, a computer forecaster" (this was the first ever computer predictor we used - Mike ).

The 1993-94 Review was also the first use I could find of my usual weekly sign-off: "Good predicting"

From the 1994-95 Review:
Computers to help run the Leagues
"Trials are complete on the major project of converting the Leagues to full computer automation, thanks to work by Mark Grunwell. The Leagues should be running on 486 PCs with a semi-automated system on Amigas as backup"

Nothing was mentioned in the 1995-96 Review, except for acknowledging those organisers who had helped, and had pledged to help, for the new season in 1996-97. I'd like to thank Mark Grunwell here again, for all the time he put into the computer work back then. Also Arron Springate who did a lot of the administration. I could never have run the leagues alone, and here are the other organisers I listed in that review:

"Arron Springate - Amiga printing, close season stats, PC spreadsheets, cover design, ideas
Mark Grunwell - work on PC spreadsheets, ideas
Barry Roberts-Jones - collection and organisation of BHFS predictions
Joyce Phillips - taking scores in on Saturdays, ideas
Glen Grunwell - witty comments
All predictors - without you there would be no competitions!"

By the mid to late 1990s, Arron and Mike ran a spreadsheet for entering the points so that the league tables were updated and stored on Arron's PC running Lotus 1-2-3 (pre-Excel), and Mark Grunwell took on this job at the end of the decade when I was busy having become a 'mature student', and Joyce Phillips collected all predictions and worked out the points manually, with Mark updating the tables with his own PC and spreadsheet. I took this back on when I returned from Norway in 2005, with Joyce still collecting the predictions and painstakingly filling in the sheets and points each week, as well as doing the cups though was helped out by Mark, Glen Grunwell and myself.



In that last section I mentioned I had thanked Glen Grunwell in 1996 for 'witty comments', and banter has been a fun part of FPA since the early days, with some great rivalries building up. Glen took this to extremes in the 1990s, and both I and Mum Joyce would look forward to Glen's hand written notes, with his predictions, arriving on the doormat every week. I kept all of those and will be reproducing some of them here for your amusement, with mention of the rivals he took aim at, and sometimes their replies too.

First though, Glen's alias of 'Eddie Endsleigh' came about in the year 1994-1995 when Glen had been relegated from the Premier League to our old Division One the previous season. In that year, and in 1995-1996, he took on this new persona based on the sponsor of what we know now as the English Football League (EFL), the three divisions below the Premier League. Since he was down in our second tier he decided to take on the sponsor's name, which became shortened to just 'Eddie', a la Iron Maiden's iconic figure. Eddie would make a series of funny comments, cartoons and stories on almost a weekly basis, until the early 2000s, that gave us all much amusement and pleasure, especially in the Phillips household of Mum and Dad (Joyce and Ted) and me.

Every sport or competition, given long enough, builds great rivalries. One of the earliest and best ones in FPA was between founder member Glen, and upcoming young member and already doing well in predictions Arron Springate. This would produce a long time rivalry and some of the first and funniest series of comments by Glen, with some good Arron retorts. In January 1990, Glen drew Arron in the Quarter-final of the F.A.Cup. Within a few days the Phillips household had a piece of paper delivered with the following cartoon


A reference to Arron being quite a big chap, and Glen also had the last laugh in that head to head which was a tight affair, with Glen shading it 2-1. But Arron only had to wait to get his revenge though, in October of the same year where he drew Glen in the Quarter-final of the League Cup, and beat Glen 17-16. That resulted in many humorous exchanges between them.

Much more to come here on the Eddie theme.



As mentioned, I had left BHFS in summer 1992 but due to the hard work of Barry Roberts-Jones the link was maintained. Barry lived even closer to Gillingham's ground than me, a stone's throw away from Priestfield. In 1993-1994, there was a suggestion initially from Mike Sherman and then from others, that since the leagues were so large it would be better to split them into two: a Premier League and a Division One, where the top league would predict Premier League games, and the bottom league would predict Division One (now called the Championship) games.

So, the decision was taken and a system of calculations introduced to link positions in the Standard and Results Leagues so that one half of all the predictors would be relegated to Division One for 1994-1995. Sadly Mike Sherman was one of those who didn't make the cut and probably regretted suggesting it! The 1994-1995 season saw the first year of two divisions, with two amateurs and one professional per year being promoted and relegated.

Today, as of 2023, the FPA still has four members who had to come up through this old system, via promotion from Division One to the current Premier League:

Glen Grunwell in 1996-1997
Elliott Grunwell in 1999-2000
Fiona Grunwell in 2000-2001
Matt Willing in 2001-2002

Glen Grunwell was in the Premier League, but was relegated to Division One in 1993-1994, and had to come back via promotion.

Elliott Grunwell, Fiona Grunwell, and Matt Willing did not get automatic entry to the Premier League as most other members do when they join FPA (since there was only one tier before 1994, and there has been only one tier since 2002.) They joined FPA during the split tier system, were entered into Division One, and had to get into the Premier League the hard way via promotion.

There are only two members still in FPA, who were members before the two tier system, and did not get relegated in that era: Mark Grunwell and Mike Phillips. That means these are the only two members who have always been in the top tier, even when a lower tier existed.



In 1997 I was in full time study and finding the running of the FPA difficult. We were now up to four leagues (Premier and Division One for Standard League and Results League), and four cups (the Group Trophy had been added in 1990-1991 and the European Cup in 1995-1996). Mark Grunwell and Arron Springate had helped me run things, with help sometimes too from Glen Grunwell, but my Mum Joyce Phillips offered to take it on, and so she did for the next 13 seasons.

The year she became ill in 2010 I took it back over, but she continued to predict until her passing away in April of 2011. If not for Joyce Phillips the FPA would probably have stopped again for some time, or even folded.

Some of Joyce's records and all time placings still stand today (2023). 12 years after she stopped predicting, Joyce:

- is still in the top 10 title winners
- is still in the top 10 league winners
- is still in the top 10 cup winners
- is still in the top 10 RL finishing percentages
- is still in the top 10 for most seasons achieving 50% or more
- is one of only 7 members to have done the league double of SL and RL (twice, only four members have managed two or more)
- is one of only 7 members to have achieved 'classic' status of the 6 major titles (SL, RL, FAC, LC, EC, GT)

Joyce still holds one of the highest success ratios, the ratio of titles won to number of seasons entered, winning 14 titles in 27 seasons; a ratio of 1.92 (as at 2023.)

For the write up on Joyce Phillips and her work for, and achievements in the FPA, go to the MEMBERS page and scroll down to FPA Honour Roll: Members Remembered.



By the late 1990s the number of amateur predictors tailed off again, with the loss of various BHFS members and other retirements. In 2001-2002 it was decided that we would reunify the two divisions into one, as promotion and relegation with so few no longer seemed such an exciting prospect. Additionally it made the work easier for Joyce Phillips who had been collecting two sets of scores in each week, with predictions from both the Premiership and Championship games.

In 2002-2003 the Premier League and Division One became one Standard League and one Results League again. However Joyce's work was not all done; Mark Grunwell had noticed that due to increasing demands on the fixture schedule by Sky TV, fewer games were appearing on the Pools coupon each week. This meant we had fewer games to predict for the Results League, so a new (Minor award) league was introduced that year, the Amateur Results League (ARL). This was a league of results percentage performance based on ALL games predicted by amateurs from the Standard League. This gave some healthy extra competition to the leagues and an additional title to win, but by 2009-2010 it was felt it had run its course with more Pools coupon games returning, and it was replaced in 2010-2011 by a trial test including predictions from Mark Lawrenson of the BBC. This was a Standard League and a Results League without Gillingham FC, purely based on Premier League games, and introduced officially in the 2011-2012 season as the 'Lawro' leagues.

In 2012-2013, the long time dream of a computer based FPA was realised, thanks to Naz Rajan and the excellent website he created. This was also the season that the UEFA-based European Super League was introduced.

In 2014-2015 the Members' Challenge League was introduced, where regular weekend predictions are used in a season long head-to-head league.

We had some new members from my former employer Exprodat Consulting, from which one member is still in the FPA, Ian Milligan; and from the 2016-2017 season onwards, new members from my workplace Saudi Aramco (Matthew Starling, Sami Almudaris and Sami's friend Khalid Mowad). FPA now also has Alan Foster who was predicting from Saudi, since 2017-2018 then he moved home to Scotland and is a continuing member. Tope Bammeke is another KSA intake, a friend made from living in the same apartment block as Alan and me. Alan, Tope and I used to watch Premier League together every weekend. As of 2024, Tope is still based there, and still watching EPL from KSA.

The FPA was now truly international, with members predicting from three countries and three continents - the third being Australia, where member Ian Milligan had permanently moved to, from the UK.





Members had voted in 2017 to keep Gillingham FC, but had The Gills gone, so too would have the original/traditional Standard and Results Leagues. And although Mark 'Lawro' Lawrenson of the BBC though did once win a title (though just one in 14 attempts), he turned out to be not as good as the FPA expected.

We had also missed the quality of those UK newspaper professionals. So instead of ways of looking to drop the traditional leagues and The Gills, the newer Premier-only, or 'Lawro' leagues were dropped, along with Lawro himself.

Due to continuing poor performances, the BBC's Mark Lawrenson is dropped from the FPA thus not requiring the two additional leagues to accommodate his Premier league only predictions.

This now meant the FPA could bring back some newspaper tipsters who had far better track records than Lawro. Also, the Results League could return to its original format and reason for design: to only predict the same as the UK newspapers predict - i.e. the traditional UK 'football pools' - where all Results League competitors, amateur and professional alike, forecast the same number of games.

The Sun, and the returnees of The Sunday Express and Sunday Mail (or Mail on Sunday as it was renamed), now had an equal chance of winning a Results League title again.

Premier Standard League (formerly Lawro Standard League) and Premier Results League (formerly Lawro Results League) were dropped. Previous title winners remain title winners though, in FPA history.

In 2018-2019, the Sunday Express and The Mail on Sunday were dropped due to poor performances, in favour of their mid-week counterparts, The Daily Express and The Daily Mail.

In recent seasons, we dropped some leagues (PSL/PRL) and streamlined others: for example, restricting the MCL to just 16 entrants so that we can fit in 30 fixture weekends; reducing the number of mid-week UEFA predictions to 12-13 (depending on UK club participation) from 18-19; and making the RL more competitive, as described above.

With four leagues and four cups, two of the cups either side of year end, we have just about the best balance for FPA - and eight titles on offer for around 22 members (26 with the professionals in the RL), everyone has a chance of winning something.



When Covid 19 started to bite in spring of 2020, things looked ominous for all sports, and the UEFA Champions League was the first competition cancelled that affected the FPA. Shortly afterwards, the Premier League and all English football stopped. We suspended all leagues and cups and kept them ready to be revived. After six weeks of largely lock down, the Premier League returned, so did the FPA and competitions resumed. But it was a different look and feel EPL, and UEFA leagues, with no fans in the grounds/stadiums. This changed the atmosphere, and the outcomes of games, which in turn became harder to predict for some, easier for others.

It took until the next season for fans to fully return, but there was still disruption where a number of players in a team would go down with the virus, and the game was called off. This led to missed matches for many weekends, and a heavy schedule for teams to play and catch up mid week, making players more tired and putting more pressure on squads. Again, results were different and many members found it hard to predict games.



The 2021-2022 season was the first where things felt normal again with full sized crowds at games and fewer cancellations.The Daily Mail, who won the Results League so emphatically in 2019-2021, was found to be using identical predictions to the Sunday Express, and on investigation it was revealed that these UK newspapers no longer have dedicated football 'pundits' assessing teams and making predictions - they buy their predictions in from the Associated Press. So, we lost two professionals.

The biggest blow though came when The Sun stopped predicting after two weeks of the season. All editions were checked, but it seems The Sun has now given up on the UK Football Pools and the predictions required for that. A shame, as first, The Sun was our longest standing professional and most successful by a long way; second, The Sun was our 'default' pro predictor used for regulating whether RL games are used or not in Naz's code, so it was a bit of a headache when The Sun stopped predicting.

Two more big events in that season:

First, the World Cup in Qatar in the winter meant that the FPA calendar took a six week break, reminiscent of that virus-induced period, and the break will affected team form - and the form of some our members. Some lost form, some benefited from the break and improved, others were not affected.

Second, FPA HQ moved home, with your editor Mike relocating to the UK just before new year. Two other members had major disruptions too. Matt Starling moved from KSA to Australia, meaning that FPA then had two members based in Australia, the other being Ian Milligan. Sami Almudaris had surgery with a long recovery time, and that certainly held back his predictions campaign. Of course health always comes first, and the FPA will, hopefully, always be there for members.



From the 2022-2023 season, FPA returned to the original and traditional format of the RL, with the inclusion of one of the few UK newspapers still predicting 1-2-X for the Football Pools. The inclusion of The Daily Star meant that the RL often has fewer games to predict than the JPSL, thus making the RL a quite different league to win from the maximums-based JPSL, where there are more games available to predict.



The FPA had already become international with the HQ move to KSA, then with Ian Milligan moving to Australia. And if we want to divide countries within the UK, Alan Foster moving home to Scotland from KSA could be said to have added another.

During the latter part of the 2022-2023 season, Matt Starling moved from KSA to Australia, giving FPA two members there.

Then Will Rajan, who was based in the UK, moved to Spain in the 2023-2024 season, Spain becoming the third country outside of the UK to have FPA members.

With the debut of Alastair Cannell at the start of the 2024-2025 season, FPA added a fourth country outside the UK, Norway. And six weeks into the same season, your editor/FPA HQ followed, so that we now have two members in Norway.

For all its faults the Internet has made many things possible, and certainly of benefit to the FPA. Firstly in having a website, secondly by members being able to predict from anywhere in the world.


More history content will be added soon.


FPA HQ thanks you all for your continued support.


Mike Phillips
October 2024

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