Here we go again with the great Interleague show, the request for spaces letter has been sent, requests received, places allocated, and the acceptance letters sent out. We are now in the booking in phase. To me it's at this point that the work really starts and the realisation that the event, not contested until April, is in reality just a few short weeks away.

There is a massive amount of work has been done to date but there is still a massive amount of work still to be done between now (early March) and April. I don't suppose anybody cares what goes on in the background as long as there are no hitches in their personal interleague experience.

The fact that for just about everybody the whole experience (apart from the various captains some of whom experience a tremendous amount of hassle in getting their players to cough up the money) is just about turning up and playing pool. Having a drink, going to bed (at some point) and then going home on Sunday after a great weekend's pool.

Put as simply as that it's hard to see why there are usually 170 plus requests for one of the 96 spots available. But delve a little deeper and it all falls in to place.

It all starts at local league level where the league officials at some point decide that they are going to affiliate to their county pool association. Once that has happened the world of pool opens up to their players.

All the league players become available should they choose to have a trial for a spot in their county team, qualify for the England team via the inter-county rankings, put their league champions in the national Champion of Champions and a host of other things that become available. I am just going to concentrate on the Interleague here though. For information about any of the EPA's other events you should be able to find what you want to know elsewhere on this web site.

Most leagues, if we are honest, only have two or three strong teams and the majority of the good players in that league will gravitate to those teams and in doing so create the basis of an interleague side. Because the players are the best that their league has to offer it's only natural that once local league domination has been achieved, players will start to look further a field for their next challenge.

That's where the Interleague steps in. Of the 43 affiliated counties, 34 run an interleague section within their county offering pool at the next level for those ready to take up the challenge.

The whole point of the interleague is that the local leagues put their finest into a team, this team will usually, but not always, take the name of the league they are representing. These "team names" are registered with the national secretary at the beginning of the year. In quite a few cases the players names are sent in later when the county starts it's interleague but by registering the team with the national secretary via the county association the team has reserved it's place in the county section and be recognised by the EPA as a valid interleague team.

This may seem a trivial thing but it is probably the single most important thing a team can do. Without being registered, as an official interleague team the team will never qualify for the national finals, even if the team wins it's county interleague section.

This is because if the EPA do not recognise the team as a registered team they will not be invited to attend the national finals. This registration process will however not affect them at county level it kicks in when a team wants to play in the national finals.

In reality, the county registers each of their teams with the national secretary when they know what teams are going to compete in the county interleague section.

Once a team starts to compete in the national finals they will be competing at a level that is a quantum leap up from local league.

The power of the interleague and the chance to be part of a competing team is so strong that professionals & internationals play within their local league against lesser players just to ensure that they will play enough matches to qualify to play for their team in the national finals.

There are not that many events in the sporting world where the players at the very top of the tree still play on a regular basis in local leagues.

Players like Darren Appleton, Mick Hill, Chris Melling, Lee Kendal, Gareth Potts, Rob Chilton, Lee Clough, Gareth Hibbott are all part of what I call the interleague family. The list of top players who play in the interleague if I were to continue would be a long list of top players and if you want to see the list then pop over to the IPA web site, a lot of the players on their ranking list will be playing in April as part of a team.

The interleague as an event has grown in stature over the years to be the pinnacle of achievement in team pool. And as such it is a major milestone in a team's lifespan to reach the level that that gets them a spot in the national interleague.

Lets hope that we do not have the weather conditions that caused the postponement of the Champions of Champions event in November last year due to the risk of flooding in Yarmouth on the week end of the event.

The re-arranged weekend was not with out it's problems either as the electricity kept failing during the final Sunday of the weekend.

Because of the problems with the COC event and subsequent rescheduling of the event for February we have a unique situation.

Normally there are five majors in the Yarmouth year but due to the cancellation of the November event we will have six majors this year, Champion of Champions in February, Intercounty finals in March, Interleague winners in April, Golden Cue in May, the Interleague ko cup in October and finally the Champion of Champions event in November.

We also have the world championship qualifiers on the Thursday and Friday before the interleague. This event seems to have levelled out at around 350-400 entrants. It may be of interest to know that of the 400 or so entrants to the event only around 50 are not involved in the interleague. By not involved I mean that they have entered totally on their own and are not attached in any way to any of the teams playing in the interleague.

I am of the opinion that the world qualifiers are probably the toughest of all the individual knockouts run in England. The I.P.A. tour is the toughest event around for individuals to participate in but it is not really a knockout in the accepted sense of the word in that the draw is seeded so if all goes according to plan, the current No 1 player will play the current No 2 player.

The qualifier draw however is by and large an open one, yes there are usually byes and some players don't have to play until the Friday but once that anomaly works its way out of the system it's a straight race where the winner of match 1 plays the winner of match 2 etc. The knock out continues until there are only 4 players left and these are the four that will get to play in the world championships individual event.

Over the years the four who qualify from this event have been exceptional players but you can't judge the true strength of the event by the four who qualify for the world championships. You will get a much better idea of the strength of the event, if you look at the players who failed to make it..

Every year brings it's own casualty list as the rounds progress and running against the trend of the last few years there was no real big name fall outs in round one but there was still quite a few names who you would not mark down as first fence fallers people such as Gary Sweetham (Surrey), Steve Tedds (Tamworth), John Astill (Doncaster), Chris Chapman (Witney). Dave Bryant (Blackwell), Danny Oliphant (Great Hollands) Steve Finnegan (Chesterfield), Steve Hotchkiss (Nottingham), Lee Smith (Doncaster) Geoff Harrison (Wigan), Roger Charles (Coventry) whilst all that lot might no be household names they are big enough to think cor, I wouldn't have expected them to lose in the first round - but they did.

Then when we got to the end of round two we had lost this group of players, and perhaps unlike round one there were some very well known names take took the early bath option in deference to proceeding to round three and as mentioned elsewhere it just goes to underline the standard at which the world qualifiers is played to from round one and not just the later stages - here are some of the players we lost from this round.

Ian Priest (Stourbridge), Mark Hogan (Worcester), David Preece (Halesowen), Mick Ruane (Derby), Nick Weller (Stoke On Trent), Iain Aldous (Ely), Karl Sutton (Lowestoft), Richard Marples (Chesterfield), Gareth Manning (Weston Super Mare), Willie Anderson (Faversham), Wayne Gardner (Northants), David Astall (Wigan), Jason Stephens (Leicester), Peter Ashman (Littlehampton), Steve Evans (Chesterfield) Nigel Olding (Peterborough), Martin Hazell (Doncaster), Nick Booth (Borden), Paul Dunkey (Brierley Hill)

Round three is where you are going to come up against some stiff opposition and in lots of matches it's hard to predict who would be the most likely to win. So although the following players left the event to reach this round is no disgrace and will give most of the losers the belief that next time it could be them who make it through but as far as last year's event goes we lost this group of players amongst others.

Michael Puntschart (Clacton On Sea), Nicky Parnell (Peterbrough), Craig Haynes (Northants), Jason Norris (Farnham), Neil Raybone (Willenhall), Jon Sanders (South Chailey), Graham Hewlett (Weston Super Mare), Jason Hill (Preston), Darren Hope (Peterbrough), Rob Gould (Colllier Row), Dean Torode (Rustington), Carl Clack (Norfolk), Paul Keeble (Felixstone), Shaune Dawber (Wigan), John Waller (Sheffield), Andy Sutherland (Leatherhead), Glenn Cahir (Wigan), Adrian Walton (Driffield), Ian Kettel (Chatham), Ian Duffy (Telford), Danny Miller (Stevenage)

By round four we are in to what I call the business end of the event and by this point the contestants have been concentrated down to the players who are playing at the top of their game, despite that, some quality players will have to be despatched and last year it was the turn of Eddie Barker (Chesham), David Robinson (Accrington), Spencer Jones (Gr Yarmouth), Mark Seaman (Rushden), Liam Stanley (Nottingham), Patrick Ward (Oakham), Ian Davenport (Wigan), John Kelly (Stretham), Matt Goodale (Spalding), Stephen Chambers (Leicester), Carl Bromley (Chorley).

The next set of losing players is amongst those that were in spitting distance of the glory of reaching the world championships. I am sure that they felt gutted for a few days after the event knowing how close they were but someone has to fall at he final hurdle and last year it was Jimmy Carney (London). Alan Mower (Colchester), Andrew Breen (Charlton), Matt Cooke (Guildford), Darren Welfare (Brighton)

If you are interested in finding out who were the final 4 who qualified last year you can have a look at the 2007 world championship qualifier section of the web site.

This year's event will be as good as all the others have been and by the end of the interleague weekend we will know who this years 4 qualifiers are.

By the time you read this, there should be a new look to interleague section of the web site with the previous winners of the event being shown on every page, the archive section will still be there but it shows a little more detail on the event year by year as well as access to the various pages also available. We are aware that the archive section is not totally complete.

The simple reason is that incredibly, we do not have the records for all the events. Until the present team took over running the event, apart from having the trophy engraved, this is the only way we know who has won the event, all events were run on paper and although the paper records were kept for a while by the tournament director following the event it wasn't long before they were consigned to the rubbish bin to make way for the next load of event generated paperwork.

I am sure that anyone reading this who has organised an event or run a pool league will understand why they were discarded after storing them for a while. The amount of paper that was generated by the two Interleague events was massive and storing what was seen as useless paperwork, once the event was over, for any length of time was just not an option.

The only reason they were stored at all was just in case something cropped up after the event that needed investigating but the dust had settled and nothing had crawled out of the woodwork so to speak the paperwork was discarded and along with it the records of the event leaving only the perpetual trophy as the sole record of the event.

Now we use computers everything is stored for perpetuity we can go back at any time to any event to check any recorded stat. Unfortunately for the players and teams from yesteryear, although I am sure the players from those days have their memories and are revisited from time to time when they meet up with their former team mates and other players from those times their achievements can't be shared with the rest of us on anything other than a verbal recount of what happened.

As the current custodian of the interleague it saddens me that we don't have a complete set of records for days gone by because the achievement from those times are just as important as today's competitions.

And as I always say when I look backwards at previous events, if you can fill any gaps in the record book please contact me and we will do our best to verify it and update the record books.

The interleague has become the hardest event, in terms of the sheer number and quality of the players involved and a large number of the teams would take most national teams apart of they ever were to meet in a match.

I have been thinking of a way of marking out to everyone involved who the previous winners of the interleague are and with the cooperation of Leicester, Trent Trophies and Dawley have decided that from this year all winners of the event can show this by, as football does with the world cup winners, by adding a gold star to their team shirts for each time they have won the event.

If it works well it can be extended to allowing runners up in the events being allowed to add a silver star to show that they have reached a national final and then perhaps bronze stars for any team that has reached a semi final

Why do this? Everyone will be aware that Trent Trophies and Leicester have won the event more than once but some teams who have won it are not so well known or it was achieved some time ago and most people will not be aware that a team they are playing has been good enough to win the event.

It is intended to show anyone at a glance that the team wearing the star has won the national interleague title and even people not associated with pool will understand if they see the stars on a team shirt, it means that the team is a winner.

Whilst we have only arranged with these three teams there is nothing to stop any previous winners adding the appropriate number of stars to their team shirts. All we ask is that before adding the stars all captains verify with us that the team is entitled to wear the stars.

Our verification process will be checking to see that the team name has not changed and that there is a direct line back to the winning team. In cases where the team name has changed the above checks will be made and additionally that the majority of the players are still with the team. We do not want a situation where a team splits and the various factions all claim to have the right to wear the star.

Tom Fahy - Tournament Director