Imagine organising a small game of football with your mates - then having 45,000 people join in uninvited.

That's what happened to soccer-mad Jon Trigg, Chris Walters and Vassos Shairlis after they set up a web site to satisfy their obsession with fantasy football.

Although the league was meant to be for their close friends, thousands of people across the world signed up last season.

With this season's big kick-off later this month, the trio have quit their jobs to run the web site full-time.

The three Albion fans started the web site a year ago after becoming fed-up with winning nothing in fantasy football leagues run by national newspapers.

Jon, 29, of Clermont Road, Brighton, said: "I was doing four different leagues but we were getting a bit bored because they hadn't really changed much.

"Plus, we were getting nowhere. The idea came up at a friend's barbecue when we were complaining about how we weren't winning because the leagues were more a game of chance than football skill.

"Like any football fan, we all think we know what's best and wanted to prove it."

www.freefantasyfootball.tv allows users to choose 11 players as well as a manager and a stadium.

And unlike most fantasy football games, players' values can go up as well as down, as can transfer budgets.

Jon said: "On the first day we had it running, Chris phoned to ask if I was taking the mickey. Ten people had registered and we didn't have a clue who they were.

"We've never advertised the site. It's just grown by word-of-mouth, people emailing friends and getting them involved."

By last January there were 20,000 teams taking part, rising to 45,000 by the end of the season.

They included a group of journalists on the Telegraph newspaper in Australia, and members of the British Consulate in Caracas, Venezuela.

To some people, to paraphrase legendary manager Bill Shankly, fantasy football is not a matter of life and death - it's more important than that.

Jon said: "I've seen friendships wane purely because of fantasy football arguments. People get so fanatical about it.

"We get lots of emails from a firm in Holland if we don't update the scores on a Sunday.

"They spend the whole of Monday morning adding them up themselves, rather than working. Their bosses weren't very happy."

Firms such as Sony and bookmakers Paddy Power asked the trio to run versions of the game on their intranet sites for the World Cup.

Jon worked in London in media sales, Chris was a programmer for American Express and Vassos was a designer for games company Acclaim.

They quit in April after realising they were spending all their free time working on the site.

Chris, of Chester Terrace, Brighton, said: "Never in our wildest dreams did we think this would be a full-time job."

The trio, all 29, have invested £10,000 in the venture and are now based at Hove Business Centre in Fonthill Road, Hove.

Sponsors have provided a prize fund of £40,000, covering the whole of the coming season and three mini-seasons.

The site asks each user which team they support, to draw up a table comparing how each club's fans perform.

While Manchester United and Arsenal may dominate the real thing, last season Wrexham fans came top in fantasy football know-how.

But there is just one drawback of the site's success which has left its creators feeling sick as a parrot.

Jon said: "Having set this up so we could play amongst ourselves, it's frustrating now we can't really take part. We still can't win."