Modification of rule 20 and proposed abolition of rule 21

From Ben Graff Chairman LDCL

A proposal to change the rules relating to eligibility of players who represent Clubs with more than one team in the same Division are being proposed. This has been tabled by Steve Rumsby (with thanks also to John Green for his work in this area.) A one page word document is attached below which outlines the proposed wording of the change and an accompanying rationale. I’m sure Steve and John will be happy to field any questions people have on this proposal prior to the LDCL AGM.

Background
The rules for sharing players between teams are meant to allow some flexibility particularly for smaller clubs who might have problems running multiple teams otherwise. They were intended to be somewhere between allowing no sharing and allowing players to play for any team as many times as they liked.
The key concept is that a player should 'belong' to a particular team, but that they should be allowed to play for other teams if a captain experiences a shortage. Currently they can play up (i.e. for a higher team), but are restricted in playing down.
Once a player has played three games for one particular team this will be their home team. They will then be allowed to play up two times for a higher team (or teams), but not allowed to play down (this excludes playing board 4 of the next highest team and board one of the next lowest team if applicable)
Rule 21 was introduced to cater clubs with teams in the same division, and has caused some confusion in that captains have not been clear on how to apply them. There is a subtle conflict between rules 20 and 21 in that rule 20 says you can't play down once you are fixed in a team whereas rule 21 allows you to play across twice. So if you have an A and a B team in the same division then an A team player can play twice for the B team. If they were in different divisions then once a player has played 3 times for the A team they cannot play for the B team.

In order to simplify things I propose to modify rule 20 and delete rule 21.
My modification for rule 20 is to assume that teams are hierarchical, and to phrase the rule in terms of teams rather than divisions.

New rule 20
If a club has more than one team entered in the League, then for eligibility purposes the teams shall be considered to be in rank order. i.e. if a club has 3 teams, A, B and C then the A team is considered to be the highest team and the C team the lowest, regardless of which divisions the teams are in.

Captains may call on players from other teams for reserves. However, on playing more than two games on any board or boards higher than bottom board in a higher team, then any such player shall be deemed ineligible to play in the lower team for the remainder of the season.

At the start of the season a club could play their A team in a D team fixture for example. This has always been the case and will still be the case with the new rule. To circumvent this would require something like registering players or more complex wording. The League has always operated on the assumption people will play to the spirit of the regulations rather than try to manipulate results. So I would prefer to leave the rule as simple as possible and trust that captains will play to the spirit of the rules.

Note that you can only play up two times regardless of how many teams there are. You cannot play two times for each higher team.