The story so far - February to July 2006.

The Retail Assassins got started in February 2006.

We heard that a dodge ball league was starting in Kettering and we started to recruit players from our workplace, Wilkinson. We had a meeting at the end of February at a local pub, which is where we decided on the name.

We started practicing mid-March on Sundays at 5:00 pm, for an hour. The first week was at the Kettering Leisure Village, we switched to the William Knibb Centre for 3 weeks. After Easter we went back to the KLV for 2 weeks, before going outdoors at Mill Road Park. The good thing about this park is that it has a hard court that can be used if it’s been raining.

We were informed that the Kettering League was going to be played on Wednesday evenings. When we heard this, 3 players immediately dropped out as they had other commitments. This left us with 7 players and we tried to recruit more. We got 2 more people before the first game, which is just as well, as one of our original players sustained a back injury at work.

We were really looking forward to our first matches on 10th May. We just want to have some fun and maybe win a few games. We struggled to get enough players for a team, but as the competitive league matches were postponed until more teams were ready we were still able to play some friendly matches.

Many of the team’s founder members dropped out for one reason or another, mainly work and study commitments. There are now only 4 of the original team members left, myself (Nick), Christina, Paul and Sarah. We have recruited friends Rad (the Warren pub) and Katie (Halfords), as well as Shaun from Wilkinson. So we went on a recruitment campaign, dropping leaflets into 150 shops in Kettering town centre. We immediately got 2 new players, Rob and Owen, from Blockbuster, who may have recruited a further 2 players from their place. This has given us enough players to field a full team and all our players still work in the retail sector.

Interdodgeball terminated their Kettering League, so Retail Assassins, Hit & Run and Jammy Dodgers decided to form our own Kettering League. We played 3 weekly tournaments before starting League Match Play on 19th July 2006.

We finished 3rd in the league’s first season, winning just 1 match, but we had fun and thoroughly enjoyed playing.

Several players have dropped out of the team at the end of Season One, including Shaun Gray as he has other commitments and starts back at Uni in October. Paul Marriott is still in the team but can’t make every week due to work commitments. We are currently looking at recruiting some of the new players from the league’s Open Nights, to boost the squad up to about 10 players.