We've had a full complement of 20 runners over the entire season of 38 wks just once, in the 2nd edition of the FT-PL tipping comp way back in season 2004-05. Three years ago we fell from 18 runners over 34 weeks back to 16 runners over 30 wks (we gained zero newbies and lost two players: FussBudget & illiniman14). The year after we again had 16 runners for a 30 wk season: ElfTwinkle was a no show & KrivoyRog returned after three seasons of R&R. Last year we were down to 14 runners over 26 weeks: KrivoyRog, PaulE and toocool4u were no shows and Lynfi was the new kid on the block.

This year we're back to 16 runners over 30 weeks: toocool4u returns after a year's R&R and andymuenz is the newbie. Welcome aboard!

This year's FT Premier League is the 19th edition of this head-to-head league style round robin "home and away" comp; 12 of the 16 runners in this year's comp have played in each of the last seven, aka a retention rate of 12 players year-in-year-out for seven straight years. We've had a total of 24 different players participate over the last eight seasons. The smallest FT-PL field was the 12 runners in the very first comp, 18 years ago in 2003-04.

2014-15 BxBarracuda dg_dave Dizart FussBudget George95 gtho4 Howie72 illiniman14 kevinatilusa N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero PaulE srini701 Sypher wwe84 16

2015-16 dg_dave Dizart ElfTwinkle FussBudget George95 gtho4 Howie72 illiniman14 kevinatilusa KrivoyRog LeoDaVinci N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero PaulE srini701 Sypher wwe84 18

2016-17 dg_dave Dizart ElfTwinkle George95 gtho4 Howie72 illiniman14 LeoDaVinci nasty_liar N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero PaulE srini701 Sypher wwe84 16

2017-18 dg_dave Dizart ElfTwinkle Fifiona81 FussBudget George95 gtho4 Howie72 illiniman14 LeoDaVinci N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero PaulE srini701 Sypher toocool4u wwe84 18

2018-19 dg_dave Dizart ElfTwinkle Fifiona81 George95 gtho4 Howie72 LeoDaVinci N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero PaulE srini701 Sypher toocool4u wwe84 16

2019-20 dg_dave Dizart Fifiona81 George95 gtho4 Howie72 KrivoyRog LeoDaVinci N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero PaulE srini701 Sypher toocool4u wwe84 16

2020-21 dg_dave Dizart Fifiona81 George95 gtho4 Howie72 LeoDaVinci Llynfi N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero srini701 Sypher wwe84 14

2021-22 andymuenz dg_dave Dizart Fifiona81 George95 gtho4 Howie72 LeoDaVinci Llynfi N-Bomb ozzz2002 paper_aero srini701 Sypher toocool4u wwe84 16

This year's FT-PL comp starts with five wins (the last three have had six winners in Round One), whch means we again have a crowd at the top of the pile.

The defending titleholder srini701 begins his defence with a loss to George95, the runner-up N-Bomb won his game against the nkotb, andymuenz, and third placed Dizart starts with a draw against toocool4u. N-Bomb has won four of the last seven comps (PaulE won in 2016 and paper_aero in 2018). That's one week down. We have 29 to go.