MR Cricket Hockey East Area Adult Hockey Leagues - Rules Notes for the 23/24 Season

As we approach the start of the new season tomorrow, there are a number of things that need notifying to Clubs prior to the start of the season, this note is to draw attention to these items, which were signed off by the League Division Management Committee including the Area League Management Committee at a meeting last night (14th September 2023). 

Full minutes will be posted as soon as they are available, however key points for clubs to note include:

Governance - The Area League Management Committee required as per the regulations consists of Rosemary Prince (Chair), Chris Perry (Secretary) and Philip Churchman (GMS/Comms). All decisions requiring ALMC approval will be agreed by this group. They will be supported by a wider League Division Management Committee which consists of the ALMC, the various League Division Managers, Richard Munns as results coordinator and Ben Whilby as indoor rep. League managers continue to have the ability to grant Selection exemption passes without ALMC approval.

Regulation Notes - There are a number of areas in the regulations whereby the ALMC has discretion or interpretation, to aid clubs understanding we have prepared a rough set of comments to sit alongside the regulations which will help Clubs understand our thinking, and the starting point for decisions. These notes are to help, not intended to be rigid, and we know there will be gaps. The division managers and ALMC will continue to address all issues on a case by case basis, but this provides a framework for our thought process. 

The full notes are here, things to draw your attention to:

1. Fines - Failure return a trophy will be a £100 fine, Failure to collect a trophy on the presentation date will also result in a £100 fine.
2. Requests for selection exemption pass may be granted if asked for in advance, if any complaints are received after a match, they will be assessed purely on the statistical information available from GMS, ie. special circumstances will not be taken into account. 
3. All games conceded will be awarded 5-0 with a -1 point penalty. Middle teams may concede if it is demonstrable that its their players are the ones unavailable, in this case lower teams may play their match without penalty, subject to fair selection rules, ie. the 50% rule applies.

As previous notified here, promotions and relegations will use 4.5.1.1, i.e. 3 up and down where divisions merge, please note this season we are treating 1N into 2NE/NW and 1S into 2SE/SW each as 2 into 1, not 4 into 2 divisions. 

Transfers - please take note of previous communications with regards to transfers, players moving between seasons need to do a transfer, the functionality is now on GMS, a player found to have circumvented this by registering with different details will count as an ineligible player and games awarded accordingly. 

Communications - Generally, anything we need clubs to read will be emailed to all Club admins via the GMS system, anything we think is useful for a wider audience will also be placed on the website, with a link emailed to club admins. In addition the East League does have facebook and "X" (formerly twitter"), links and content are posted on these however this content is generally supplementary and self generated by the author, Clubs will not miss anything important or likely to cause problems by not having access to these platforms, they do however have an ability to quickly reach a wide audience so will be used to send out ad-hoc bits and pieces.