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COVID 19 will undoubtedly be blamed for providing many challenges in 2020 and none more so than to the world of competitive team sport.
In response to this challenge the prefects came to the Sports Department in early October, demanding action on the internal, competitive sporting front – and so the Wellington Premier League was born.
Created to off-set the lack of external fixtures, an internal franchise competition, the Wellington Premier League, WPL, was established. This included four franchises that would play in each age group across Football, Girls Hockey and Touch Rugby, with all results feeding into an overall league.
Before any fixtures could be played identities needed to be established for the four franchises, and the pupils came up with these Wellington-based names: South Front Sharks, Copenhagen Cavaliers, Rockies Rhinos and Pink Pav Panthers, which allowed the marketing team to develop a brand for each franchise. ‘Dahl’s Destroyers’ was also a popular choice but anxiety about both logo and possible refereeing bias saw it just miss out!
The League started in the second half of term, with matches in all sports taking place during timetabled sports sessions. After Round 1 the Copenhagen Cavaliers took an early lead in the table, with 77 points, but by week 2 the Rhinos had moved from 3rd place to table toppers with 147 points.
The leagues continued to develop, but by Round 4, overall placings were beginning to take shape with the Cavaliers at the top of the table and despite their valiant efforts, the Sharks stranded in 4th place. The final standings saw the Panthers in 2nd, Rhinos in 3rd and Sharks in 4th, meaning the eventual winners were the Copenhagen Cavaliers, who topped the table by winning the rugby competition by a margin of 30 points and finishing joint second in football, two placings which offset their less than successful hockey efforts.
Congratulations must also go to the Panthers who won the hockey league and to the Rhinos for walking away with the football league.
It should not be overlooked that the real success of the WPL was that it was able to provide over 300 pupils the experience of competitive sport in Michaelmas 2020, a term that otherwise saw very little real competition.
We are looking forward to seeing inter-school fixtures return – but should they not we are certain that the WPL will return in 2021 – but with a new round of sports to be contested!
