Play Dodgeball

Today we have Jonathan Pearson with us from Play Dodgeball.  Can you tell us a little bit about your business please Jonathan?

I certainly can, yes.  Play Dodgeball has been running since February this year and it is a really fun, fast and freinetic sports league, recreational league for adults from 16 and over, where people can enter a team of 6-10 players.  We have 6 players playing at once but you can have substitutes as well.  You enter a league, you get a set of fixtures, for example in the Manchester league at the moment we have got 12 teams and we split it into 2 divisions so you play the other 5 teams in your division.  You play 2 teams each week and then the next week you play 2 more teams and so on.  That is pretty much how it works.  We have got a league running in Chester as well.  The Manchester league runs in Hume at Trinity Sports Centre every Tuesday between 7-9pm and the Chester league runs at the Catholic High School in Chester every Monday 6.30-7.30pm.

Fantastic.  I assume by the fact you said it is from 16 there is quite a wide range of ages that take part in this?

We do, yes.  For example in Manchester we have got 1 team of all boys who are about 17-18, they are all at college, where as we have got some other teams which are really mixed.  We have got one team called Fear Our Balls, again they are all men actually but there are all from one working environment and they are probably all in their 20’s, early 30’s.  We have called a team called The Jammy Dodgers who are all girls in their early 20’s who really enjoy it and we have got a mixed, the oldest player is probably towards 40 sort of thing.  The idea is that is it is a sport that is a little bit different to your more main stream sports and maybe if people have got bored of going down the gym to get their exercise, or maybe don’t want to be quite as competitive as playing in a football or netball league then this is something fun.  Also teams do get quite into it and tactics come into play and teams start to take it quite seriously.  We have had some controversies within the league and all sorts so it gets quite entertaining down there, but there is a good crowd and everybody enjoys it which is the main thing.

That sounds fantastic.  Do you have a website for your Dodgeball?

We do, its called www.play-dodgeball.co.uk and on there are all the details about the games, so if you have never played dodgeball before there is a little video to show you how it all works.  There is all the rules of the game as well.  There is a form where you can enter a team and pay your entrance fee for the league on there which is just £20 and then every week when you come along and play it is £20 as well.  There is also the tables for the Manchester and Chester leagues and all of the fixtures are up there as well so you can see how it all works.  Each week when the teams come down they get 2 games which are 20 minutes long each and each match involves 6 games of 2 ½ minutes.  So basically you have 6 players on each side throwing the ball at each other, trying to hit each other, and at the end of the 2 ½ minutes whoever has got the most players left is the winner, they you go 1-0 up.  You play 6 of those to decide who wins from that.  You might end up with a score of 4-2 for example at the end of it

That sounds really good fun and as you said if people are bored with just going to the gym or just going swimming, then this is a fantastic other option for them.  Thank you so much Jonathan for talking to us today.

It is a pleasure, thank you very much for letting me come on.