As part of the Season Preview for the Corsham Print Wiltshire Senior League the managers of the teams in both the Premier Division and Division 1 were asked to predict where they thought each team would finish at the end of the season. Entries were received from 20 of the 23 team managers.

With all of this weekend’s games postponed due to frozen pitches there has been time to work out how each manager is doing with their predictions. When calculating the points for each manager, based on what I had published as the scoring method at the start of the season, it quickly became clear it was going to turn out to be a bit like an episode of Bargain Hunt where the one who gets the lowest negative score wins! Concerned that every manager was going to get negative points I have re-vamped the scoring system and the revised scoring system will now be as follows:

• League position correctly predicted (15 points)       
• Team one place either side of predicted position (10 points)                                       
• Team two places either side of predicted position (5 points)
• Team more than two places from predicted position (minus points calculated by taking the difference between the predicted position and actual position (maximum negative points for each team would be -15)).

The manager with the best score will receive a case of beer and a couple of training balls for their club at the end of the season.  Whilst five managers (25%) have already departed the beer will still be given to the winning manager even if they have left the club with the training balls going to the club they were with at the time they made their prediction.

The status as at 10 December 2022 is that the current overall leader by one point is one of those former managers, with Craig Jones the ex-Royal Wootton Bassett Town Development manager the current leader, with his former managerial partner from Wroughton Ben Jarrett just that one point behind him. Neil Lee of Stratton Juniors is currently in third place.

At the other end of the table it is some of the new managers to the league that occupy the bottom places but it is perhaps understandable that they had little feel for the relative strength of the various teams at the start of the season.

When it comes to the Premier Division alone, the manager who seems to know his stuff is Malmesbury Victoria Development manager Troy Prentice who is just above both Craig Jones and Ben Jarrett. The current expert on Division 1 is Neil Lee from Stratton Juniors.

Latest Points & Positions

10 December 2022