League News
The Veterans League fixture programme for the 2022 summer season for both the 6-Man and 10-Man leagues was scrapped yesterday after a reaction from teams in both leagues. The full programme was released last week but soon received criticism from several clubs unhappy with the imbalance of teams in the divisions.
In particular, the teams in Division 5 of the 10-Man League were unhappy with a division of 10 teams with a 26-week league programme. The programme had been packed with a disparate set of fixtures that saw teams playing some teams twice but then playing two random teams four times over the season. This structure had been approved by the Management Committee prior to its publication last Friday. However in an email to all clubs yesterday David Sykes, the League Secretary withdrew the full fixture programme and said
Due to the fixtures for division 5 in the 10 man and division 3 in the 6 man being totally unacceptable in there construction, I have had no choice but to generate a full new set of fixtures on bowlsnet for all divisions.
It is known that there had been a reaction from some clubs to the structure of the 10-Man League with 14 teams in Divisions 1 and 2, with 12 teams in Divisions 3 and 4 and only 10 teams in Division 5. The option to level the divisions out in a fair manner had been avoided and in his email to clubs there is no indication that this root cause is to be addressed in the revised programme.
The League Secretary talks in his email of introducing blank weeks in the revised programme for teams in Division 5 which will further irritate some clubs instead of addressing the imbalance of teams in each division. He says that 'the new fixtures will be on bowlsnet hopefully by middle of next week at the latest'.
The 6-Man League had lost one team from the 2021 season but gained five new ones. Two of the new ones went straight into Division 1, two more into Division 2 and one new team was starting in Division 3. This provided for a 12-team Division 1 and there would be 10 teams in the other two divisions. It is not clear from the League Secretary's email what the perceived problem is behind the decision to scrap all these fixtures or what the proposed solution is that will be introduced. His only reference to this is that they are 'totally unacceptable in there construction',
There is no mention of the fixture programme being withdrawn on the Veterans League website.
There is no reason why the promoted teams cannot be promoted and still have a reorganisation on the lines you mention resulting in a 14 team Division 1 and then 12 in the other 4 divisions. That is obviously the preferred format making it fair for all teams. Having 14 teams in the top 2 divisions and only 10 in the bottom division makes no sense at all.
There is a precedent for this as well as that is what happened in 2018. Four teams were relegated from Division 2 that year including Thorpe Green and Kirkheaton Cons who finished outside the relegation places. There was additional ripple-on relegations from divisions 3 and 4 as well to leave 12 teams…
it was decided by the mc that we try to avoid the byes by tying them into the fixtures,this caused a very out of sync fixture list where a team or teams ended up playing a team 3 away games and 3 home games.and in one instance a team was only playing a opposition team just once at home and once away.i am not making any excuses for this total mix up of fixtures, but it was decided to run with it.
the amount of critisism i got from clubs was overwhelming but fully understandable. it was totally unsuitable.
and with ref to a total reconstruction of the format of the league would mean that 6 promoted teams would have…
Unfortunately the league sec is in a no win situation when it comes to formatting the division structure. At the moment he is trying to accommodate 62 teams within possibly a 26 weeks window. Unless clubs accept that (a) they may have byes (b) they may have to play more than 1 game a week or finally (c) play the odd team more than once, the uneven sections will have to continue. I'll get my coat.
The new Veterans league structure appears to be that Divisions 1 and 2 are going to play 26 games whereas division 5 only appear to be playing 18 games, which is totally unfair. The lower divisions pay the same subscriptions as divisions 1 and 2 so should be entitled to play a similar number of games. This has yet to be confirmed though.