League rules working group - rule changes

Update:

We had our rules working group meeting, discussed the proposals and made some decisions. It was held at Redland on 31st August.

In attendence was; Andy Rogers and Jeremy Goulding from Lansdown, Harry Duckworth, Sandie and myself from Redland, Ed Cross from Workout, Michael Lok from the Wanderers. Michael, Sandie and I had our League hats on too.

See the summary list in the previous email (below) for the proposals and proposers. These are the decisions and changes that were made:

• Scoring
  • Prem A to C will continue to use PAR 11
  • Division 1 and lower will default to using PAR 15 but any of the strings can play PAR 11 if both captains agree. Reasons for doing this might be:
    • High level players, even matches, could go on for ages and be brutal otherwise
    • Limited court time for all manner of reasons
    • Hot courts
    • Personal preference of the players but, remember, both captains need to agree
• Fixtures
  • We will try to avoid two teams from the same club playing each other in the last two weeks of the league
  • Given how hard it is to generate the fixtures we can't gaurantee this but we'll try!
• Bonus points
  • Bonus points for a team win wlll be increased from 4 to 5.
  • This is to reduce the chances of a team who win every fixture, not winning the division
  • It's also in line with other counties as it's effectively one extra point for all five strings
  • You don't get all the bonus unless you show up with a full team
• Extra points for the use of qualified referees
  • We all agreed this was a good thing to do but will still need to work out how to implement it.
  • This is on hold for now but we'll see if we can come up with something for the Spring league

All these (apart from othe bonus points for refs) will be in operation for this coming Autum league.

Look out for an update for some significant changes around Prem A which is evolving into a 'Super prem' division to run on a Tuesday. John Welton is running that working group which will conclude very soon.

Thanks for those who attended and contributed. If you don't like the changes, you'll just have to kick yourself for not taking part in the group!

Cheers,

  Michael, Sandie, Richard (League secretaries team)

At this year's AGM we had several proposals for adding/changing some of the league rules. This was really aimed at the mixed league but we'll include the Women's league too in case there are any parallels.

Please have a look at the proposals in the AGM presentation - slides 27-33.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YLTTS14WfDm_fT8AUFRB8h6tlm5JY_uL/view

Here's the summary list. Detail in the doc.

• Proposal to modify how Prem A operates - John Welton (Lansdown)
• Proposal to modify scoring in Divs 1 downward - Andrew Blake (Bradley Stoke)
• There shouldn't be fixtures between two teams from the same club in the last 2 games of the season -Ed Cross (Workout)
• If two teams from the same club are in the same division and they need to forfeit a match, the points are always awarded to the higher ranked team - EdCross (Workout)
• If A play B and A is short then A should backfill using B players - Ed Cross (Workout)
• 'Grand slam' bonus points could be given to a side that wins all 10 fixtures, say for a bonus 50 points, to ensure that the team who wins all their matches are guaranteed to win the league too - Ed Cross (Workout)
• A team gets one extra bonus point for providing at least one ref qualified to level 1 - Trustees

The first of these - a new Prem A division - is being run by John Welton and is a separate exercise. The rest we will look at in our rules working group.

It's been hard to find a time but we need to meet before the league kicks off so we're left with Thursday, 31st August. We can use a video link rather than have to travel so hopefully a bit easier to attend.

Can you please let me know if you would like to attend so I have an idea of numbers and who will be on the call. We want a few team/club representatives and, ideally the proposers themselves so they can lead their respective proposals.

Thanks,

   Richard, Michael and Sandie.