3-team leagues

Below is a table showing the number of teams in a league, versus the number of weeks needed to complete the league fixture. This assumes that for an n-team league, you play n games on league night, so that each team plays in 3 games. (Click on a number of teams to see the appropriate grid. Here is an explanation of how to read a grid.)

TeamsWeeks TeamsWeeks
3 1 9 4
4 1 10 6
5 2 11 5
6 5 12 11
7 1 13 2
8 7 14 13

(Or you may be looking for tournament grids.)

If your league season is a fixed length, then you may wish to try to fiddle the number of teams, to a number that works well for you. For example, if your season is 12 weeks of fixtures plus one week of finals, try to use a grid that runs 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 weeks; as these are all factors of 12.

Note, too, that "good" grids still work fairly well played one team short. For example, if you only have 6 teams, you can play the 7-team grid, with the seventh team as a blank. Every team will play the "blank" team exactly once; so every team has a single "head-to-head" (i.e. two-team) game.

It's fairly common to finish a league with a Finals.

Back to the main Grids page