I’ve updated the club calendar with all of the remaining fixtures through to the end of the season. Note that the matches in cup weeks aren’t all known at this stage, obviously.

If there are any errors or omissions be sure to let me know, Rebecca.

Cynthia has been circulating a fixtures list, but if you haven’t got one yet or have misplaced it (Paul), then look at the league handbook. I haven’t done so yet, but I will be adding all of the fixtures to the club diary soon, too…

Find it here or look in the sidebar somewhere (the agenda view is pretty good) ====>

Don’t forget you can subscribe to it through Google Calendar, too; use the button at the foot of the sidebar.

Note that the Sunday sessions are free to members, but are to be used for team selection.

That’s gonna hurt…

Matches start W/C 22nd September, so we’ve 3 weeks of Monday nights to prepare before club nights revert to 1 court 8-10. I’ve put the initial dates in the club calendar (see also this entry and the google calendar button in the side-bar) and I’ll add details of the matches once I get sight of the new handbook.

The fee structure is unchanged from last year, and can be seen in full on the welcome page.

The calendar is provided by Google, so you can easily subscribe to the information or add it to your own GCal, if you wish. You can do this very easily by clicking on the ‘Google Calendar’ button available at the foot of the side-bar, or by clicking here.

Saturday 18 August

• 0700-1400, BBCi
• 1300-1410, BBC ONE

Sunday 19 August

• 0700-1400, BBCi
• 1400-1530, BBC TWO

• Club Nights re-start on the 3rd, 7pm – 10pm;
• Afternoon Selection & Match Practice – Sundays 9th and 16th September;
• Matches start W/C 24th September.

This gives us 3 whole club nights for selection and practice before the matches start again. We have also booked 2 afternoon sessions on the 9th and 16th September, purely for selection and match practice. These will take place at Salt Ayre, where we have 2 courts for 2 hours between 2.30 & 4.30.

This season, club night will be restricted to 1 court 8-10 on Monday nights at the college when matches are on.

All dates and events will be updated to the club calendar as they become known.

No great surprises, and, as far as our teams go, no promotions or demotions. Here are our teams and final positions.

• ‘A’ team – Division 2, 7 of 10
• ‘B’ team – Division 3, 7 of 9
• ‘C’ team, Division 4, 4 of 9
• ‘D’ team, Division 5, 5 of 8

Well done everybody!

THE RALLY POINTS SCORING SYSTEM
The new Rally Points Scoring System, adopted by Badminton England some 12 months ago is now used in all events run by Badminton England, this includes County Tournaments, County Matches and Junior Events. From next season the Inter-town League will play to this format.
The time has now come for our League to make the decision whether to ‘go with the flow’ so to speak and adopt the system for play from next season.
A demonstration of the new format will be held at the new Sports Hall at RIPLEY SCHOOL, Ashton Road, Lancaster, on Thursday, 5th April, 2007, commencing at 7.30pm. This will show how the new scoring system works, together with serving positions on court. A notification has been sent to all Club Secretaries about the evening, but all of you please come along and see for yourself.
The matter will be an Agenda item at the A.G.M. in June, where it will be discussed and voted upon.
Details of the new scoring system can be found on the Badminton England web-site – badmintonengland.co.uk and go the Events page, right hand column.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to take a format which was specifically developed so that international-standard play would be more palatable to a TV audience and then try to apply it to local league standard players (a sixty-second interval at 11 points? What, really?). Keeping track of the position of players looks difficult (an assumption backed up by the number of professional player and umpire errors in evidence at the recent international in Preston) and I’d be concerned that the system will just make people more tentative and defensive, and could lead to slow, drawn out games. Also, any system where you can lose a match by serving into the net is going to suck at our level, frankly.

Take a look at the rules. Download the simplified rules below, copied from the Badminton England website.

What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.

rally_points_info_sheet.pdf

Earlier, in the mixed doubles…

1/4 Final M 2

Nathan ROBERTSON & Gail EMMS 1 – 2 ( 17-21, 21-18, 21-23 ) ZHENG Bo & GAO Ling CHN