Summer 2009 Season

We have had, i believe, a record entry for the CAPL this Summer, 72 teams have entered the league. We have 67 of last winter's 68 and 5 new teams.

This has led to certain logistical problems in sorting out the divisions.
As you can see this is too many for 7 straight divisions of 10. The committee had to come up with a solution. We thought about having 6 divisions of 10 and 1 division of 12. This would be four extra fixtures for that particular division. It is hard enough already fitting in 2 seasons in the year so these fixtures would need to be slotted in on nights other than Thursdays. The logical choice was a Sunday as that is when the comps are held. However it was felt that asking a division to play four extra fixtures on a Sunday was not feasible, especially during a Summer season when a lot of people have other activities such as cricket, golf, fishing etc. This is in addition to family holidays and 3 bank holiday weekends and the other constraints of usual family life for many people.

We briefly though of 5 x 10 and 2 x 11 but on investigation an 11 team division has the same number of fixtures as a 12 team division but with byes thrown in. We also thought about moving the first round of the team KO and singles back to a Sunday. However this would give all divisions an extra 2 Sundays to play and the 12 team division would still have an extra two fixtures to complete on top of that. So basically the same problem.
After this was rejected, the decision was to expand the league to 8 divisions. The next problem was deciding the size of the divisions. Various options were explored.

The obvious solution was 8 divisions with 9 in each divsion. However this would either mean relegating the 3rd bottom in the prem or not promoting the 2nd team in div 1. Then it would knock on down through div 1 with either 4 going down from div 1 or no promotion from div 2. This was felt a bit unfair.

We also looked at 4 x 10, 2 x 9, 2 x 7. This was rejected as a division of 7 would give 6 byes a season.

Then we explored 4 x 10 and 4 x 8. This looked a reasonable solution but again a division of 8 gives 4 byes a season and we tried to reduce the number of divisions with only 8.

We then settled on 2 x 10, 4 x 9 and 2 x 8. As a team pulled out of div 2 last season this was the logical place to start reducing the size of the divisions. It does however have some effect on a few teams. All of the teams concerned have been informed and whilst they may not be over the moon they understand the situation.

Captains Meetings will be organised the the League Secretaries for week commencing 13th April.