Fixtures

All of the fixtures for the new season are now online. The first matches are on the 23rd September for Tuesday teams and the 24th September for Wednesday teams.

Receipts

For those teams that have not yet collected the receipts for their team registration fees, they can be collected from behind the bar in the pool room at Racks. Please only take the envelope with your team's name on it.

Venues

There are two teams (Clee Racks and Racks Nomads) who will be playing from the new Racks venue in Cleethorpes. As it will not be open until after the season has started, they will begin the new campaign playing from the Racks venue in Grimsby before moving at a later date. We will inform the teams in their respective divisions once the move has been made.

Rapid Pandas will now be playing from The Parity.

Proposed Changes

The following proposed changes were put forward by teams during the registration period:

1. Matches in the Wednesday Premier Division to be increased from 18 frames to 20 frames and teams requiring a minimum of 5 players to play a match with players being allowed to play a maximum of 4 frames each.

This format was introduced for the Wednesday Premier Division in this year’s summer league. It was put to a vote of the teams in the Wednesday Premier Division for our new season and was passed by a majority vote.

2. Matches outside of the Wednesday Premier Division to be increased from 14 frames to 15 frames due to matches finishing early.

Last season the majority of teams in every division voted for matches to be 14 frames in length. This created uniformity across every division outside of the Wednesday Premier Division. It was the same case in this year’s summer league. The committee felt that it was too soon to vote for another increase in frames now that we have a settled format in place and that one additional frame wouldn’t resolve the issue of matches finishing too early. It was also felt that by increasing the length of matches to 15 frames this would have a detrimental effect on the competitiveness of each division by eliminating draws and creating a bigger rift between the top and bottom teams.

3. Reducing the minimum number of players needed to play a match from five to four.

In a similar response to the previous proposal, the recent reduction from 6 players to 5 players, which was voted in by a majority of teams last season, has been a success. The committee believes that to reduce this again to a minimum of 4 players is unnecessary and will allow certain teams to dominate matches with their better players.

Registering Players

All player registrations need to be approved by the League Secretary before they appear on your team page and are eligible to play. If the player does not appear on your team page straight away, do not try and register them again. Wait for the player to be approved. When registering players, please search for the player first using their surname to see if they are already on the system in order to prevent duplicate player profiles from being created.

Any player registered after 19:30 on a match night will not be eligible to play for your team that night.

Forfeiting Matches

If you forfeit any match, including a match in the team knockout competitions, you will receive a £20 fine. If you forfeit three matches during the course of a season you will be expelled from the League.

Postponing Matches

If you postpone a match in the first half of the season, it must be played before the second half of the season begins. If you postpone a match in the second half of the season, it must be played before the last designated fixture of the season in your division.

You must provide the opposing team more than 24 hours notice when postponing a match and also inform the League Secretary. It is the responsibility of the team that postpones the match to arrange a suitable date on which to play it. It you fail to do so or fail to play it before the required deadline, it will be classified as a forfeited match and the rules for forfeiting matches will apply unless you can prove to the committee that you made a concerted effort to get the match played. If neither team can agree a new date on which to play a match the committee will choose a date on which it must be played.

If a match is postponed it is the home team’s responsibility to inform their venue about the postponement.

Team Knockout Competitions

Traditionally the team knockout has been played across both nights with every team involved. There have always been issues with teams from opposite nights being drawn against each other and arguments over which night matches should be played. When we allowed players to play on both nights, this also created problems with cup tied players and some teams dropping out of the competition as they didn’t have a sufficient number of eligible players. This year in order to combat this the summer league separated the team knockout competition into separate nights. We will be doing the same for our new season. Each night will have its own team knockout competition and team plate knockout competition.

The format of matches in the team knockout competitions will also be changing. With teams only requiring a minimum of five players to play a league match, the same will now apply to knockout matches. Previously matches were a race to seven with a deciding frame being played if the match went to 6-6. Matches will now be best of fifteen with the winning team the first to reach eight frames.

The following weeks are reserved for matches in the team knockout competitions:

Week commencing 29th September

Week commencing 27th October

Week commencing 24th November

If you forfeit a match in the first round of the team knockout competition you will not receive a spot in the team plate knockout competition.

The end of season Champion of Champions knockout competition will remain as a single competition across both nights. Places will be awarded to the winning teams from each of the six divisions plus the winning team of each night’s team knockout competitions. Should a team win both their division and their night’s team knockout competition, the place in the Champion of Champions will be awarded to the runner up from their night’s team knockout competition. Should the runner up have also won their division, the place in the Champion of Champions will be awarded to the team that finished in second place in the highest division.