"SENiLe began in 1986. I had fairly recently discovered night O and was disappointed to discover so few night events in the South East. Whilst reading the BOF fixture list one day I came across night league fixtures for the South West, Bristol area. At the next CROC committee meeting I enquired of more long-standing SEOA members, why did we have no night league here in the South East? Dave Harrington replied the obvious, that is, no one wanted to organise it! CROC at that time was short of areas and unable to contribute fully to the SEOA set-up, so I decided to volunteer to organise a night league. Derek Case who had a computer agreed to give some practical support. I rang Mike Elliot the SEOA fixture secretary and also a keen night O man. He just said go ahead and do it. Mike contributed the dubious name to the league when it appeared in the SEOA fixture list and he also went on to win the inaugural year."

"The original idea was just to tie up the results of the events that were happening anyway, to encourage further events and also publicise the league. For these reasons the first scoring system was based around the distance of each course, with the winner scoring at 100 points per km. However, it quickly became clear that clubs were very happy to put on events to a set format, so we standardised on the four course format for the second year with set scores on each course. We used the night colour coded names taken from an event recently organised by Mark Blackstone of LOK, i.e. ochre for yellow, maroon for red, navy for blue and chocolate for brown. Events and attendances were positive and to try and increase participation further we introduced certificates for all classes, then later SEOA night badges."

"Attendances remained very similar for some time, but after about six years I felt that I had run out of new ideas and that the league was in danger of being neglected. My lack of computer skills was also making it difficult to co-ordinate things and sort results. So I asked for volunteers to keep the league going ....... " SENiLe II, the sequel.