The League is now in it's 50th season
This year we are celebrating 50 years of Evening League tennis in Burnley,
As such we are giving free entry this season for both the League and Tournament.
The league started in 1969 as the Burnley Evening Tennis League and grew out of the old Parks League which was the Burnley Corporation parks playing against each other at weekends and evenings. The earliest records show that in 1973 Ightenhill "B" existed as a team. The same team i.e. Don Tattersall and Barry Mitchell are still playing in 2018, Some of the original team names from 1973 still exist but are not the original players. Originally there was only one division and teams played each other only once. In 1974 with more teams entering it was split into divisions playing both home and away. In 1995 there were 17 divisions comprising 153 teams, but unfortunately since then there has been a steady decline down to less than 100 teams and 11 divisions in 2008. In 2010 the league had shrunk to around 75 teams. Last year there were 63.
Lets hope we can gain more teams this season.
From the beginning of the league the handbooks were hand written, then copied and stapled together by hand, a long and tedious job.
In 2003 we progressed to computerising the divisions but still had to hand produce the handbooks.
In 2010 we computerised the results, this enabled easy access to League positions and Tournament results.
Also in 2013 the scoring system was modified for all divisions.
Last year we went green and the handbooks are now downloadable "online" thus saving hours of time and a great many trees!
As we celebrate the 50 year mark the committee were wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how best to celebrate the occasion?.
Anyone with any ideas please contact
Dave Sudall
07703 106976