The two stage approach is based upon the system used by the Scottish Premier League.
This page is to illustrate how the two stages would work. In this example there are eight players participating in the league.
Format
- Stage 1: All players will play each other twice, “home” & “away”.
- Stage 2: When Stage 1 is complete the players will be divided into two groups, top half & bottom half. The players in each group will play each other twice more (and not play the players in the other group). The players who finishes top of bottom group cannot pass the player who finishes bottom of the top group even if they win more points.
End of Stage One
In Stage One all players play each twice, once "home" and once "away".
In this example the league table at the end of Stage One looks like:
| Pos | Name | Pl | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | Alan | 14 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 42 |
| 2 | Bill | 14 | 12 | 0 | 2 | 36 |
| 3 | Charles 1 | 14 | 7 | 2 | 5 | 23 |
| 4 | David 1 | 14 | 7 | 2 | 5 | 23 |
| 5 | Edwin | 14 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 16 |
| 6 | Frank | 14 | 3 | 1 | 10 | 10 |
| 7 | George 2 | 14 | 0 | 2 | 12 | 2 |
| 8 | Harry 2 | 14 | 0 | 2 | 12 | 2 |
Goal Difference is not used to separate players who have the same number of points. In our example table the following players with the same number of points are separated using...
1 Charles is placed above David as in their head-to-head games Charles won the first game 1-0 and the second was a 0-0 tie.
2 George and Harry tied both of their head-to-head games, therefore, their positions was determined by a shoot out. George won the shoot out 2-1 and is placed above Harry.
Stage Two
The players are split into two groups. Each player plays the others in their group twice, once "home" and once "away".
In our example the groups would be:
- Alan, Bill, Charles, David
- Edwin, Frank, George, Harry
End of Stage Two
When all of the players have played the others in their group the final tables for each group are:
| Pos | Name | Pl | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | Alan | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| 2 | Bill | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 12 |
| 3 | Charles | 6 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 6 |
| 4 | David | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| Pos | Name | Pl | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | Edwin | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| 2 | Frank | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 12 |
| 3 | George | 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| 4 | Harry | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
When the results from the two groups are added to the table from Stage One it looks like:
| Pos | Name | Pl | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | Alan | 20 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 60 |
| 2 | Bill | 20 | 16 | 0 | 4 | 48 |
| 3 | Charles | 20 | 13 | 2 | 9 | 41 |
| 4 | David | 20 | 7 | 2 | 11 | 23 |
| 5 | Edwin | 20 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 34 |
| 6 | Frank | 20 | 7 | 1 | 12 | 22 |
| 7 | George | 20 | 1 | 3 | 12 | 7 |
| 8 | Harry | 20 | 0 | 3 | 17 | 3 |
Despite Edwin having more points than David he still finished in fifth place as he was in the second group.