London’s mighty Central League draws to a close for the 2023/24 season and to describe Division 1 as “tough” is very much an under-statement!

The Division 1 champions are St Katherine’s Trust (aka Ghana’s national team) who have won 18/22 of their matches thanks to their strength in depth and two regular players – Derek Abrefa and Emmanuel Kwesi Asante. The TT Fight Club enjoyed a good season, led by Jerry Fung and Ho Yin Tam.

Highbury 1 had a very good squad with Ching Jay Law, George Downing, Bryan Kwan and Israel Awolaja but they could not quite keep pace with the leaders. 

Fusion 1 clearly have potential to cause upsets and were the last team to beat the League Champions (7-3) with an outstanding performance from Larry Trumpauskas (pictured above, who won three), Tianyi Yu (2) and Jamal Dennison (2). But the strength of Fusion 1 varied dramatically as they called upon 18 players to put in an appearance. A regular strong squad would certainly have livened things up a bit for the Bermondsey club.

Four of Morpeth’s five teams finished in the bottom half of the table with only Morpeth III featuring in the top half, thanks largely to Abdullah Abaidulla and Munib Ahmad.

Coming up from Division 2 next season will be St Katherine’s Trust II, which included Daniel Howard on 93.55% and Rayan Ansari with 90.24%. Joining them will be Fusion II who benefitted from Gary Spencer 95.24%, Jeffrey Tang 90.57% and Martin Smith 94.12%. Needless to say, next year’s Division 1 will be somewhat more testing for them!