The Mid Sussex League is setting up a new format for its competition to cure the fixtures backlog crisis.

Clubs voted at a special meeting at Haywards Heath this week to split each division into two.

Teams will play each other home and away and the two group winners and basement sides will play-off to determine the champion-ship and wooden spoon positions.

But league secretary Laurie Parsons insists teams that are running away with divisions will not see their performances go to waste.

He explained: "We will calculate each team's points and divide it by the number of games they have played to work out their points average.

"Then in descending order on averages, every other team will be put in one group, while the others will form the second group."

He added: "Then each team's average will be multiplied by three and then rounded to the nearest number and that will work out how many points a team in the group starts on."

Once these complicated calculations are made, it is back to a simple league system. That is until the end of the season when a one-off match between the group winners will determine the championship.

But Parsons insists that the league cannot come up with a better solution. He said: "Some might say a championship should not be decided by a one-off match, but the adverse weather has meant we have had to come up with something.

"This is the best we could manage under the circumstances and only four clubs were against it at the meeting."

An example of how this system works well and how it does not can be seen by looking at Wisdom Sports and Clayton in division one.

Leaders Wisdom Sports, who have 14 matches left, will still have to play ten games. Meanwhile, Clayton, who have 17 matches to play, will have seven fixtures less.

All league games this weekend have been called off and cup competitions will continue where spaces allow.