At our recent AGM one of the teams made a, lets call it an ‘observation’, that certain calls which were obviously dolls were not called. Now calling is, like any other refereeing, the most controversial part of any game. In Aunt Sally, ignoring foot faults, or extra tape on sticks, or handicaps or… well one of them.. anyone could do better than the person doing the job. Obviously, that goes without saying. IKR! Funny how there are always a lack of volunteers to do the job when the Captain asks though!

If you get your team in that situation of really dubious calling ideally the Captains should discuss it and if necessary change the caller. Keep it sporting. If all else fails walk away from the match and report it to the Committee. We don’t want to lose teams in the league but neither can we tolerate deliberate cheating and bringing the game into disrepute – that’s not good for any of us.

So back to dolls.

I was taught that if the doll goes up and backwards that it’s a doll. If it goes straight up it can’t be, I mean that’s just physics! – unless the stick lands on the top of the doll which would be a bit obvious. If a doll falls forward, again it can’t be a doll unless the stick has obviously hit it from behind – and I’ve seen quite a few of those where you think the stick has missed and then knock! – You know it’s good when you hear the wood.

For the avoidance of doubt it’s worth mentioning any stick that hits the ground first then the doll is not a doll. Any doll that is struck and lies down on the swivel is not a doll – similarly a doll that upends and stands upside down for a split second (yes I’ve seen that!). Any doll that falls off with a stick nowhere near is not a doll. Technically, any stick that hits something else (like an overhanging tree) and hits the doll is not a doll – but I think most would count that as a lucky shot!

The swivel pad SHOULD be smaller than the base of the doll – the doll should overhang all round by a small amount. This placement allows the doll to be hit without hitting the swivel if it’s a low shot but it had to be a solid direct movement of the doll. Again in my view if the doll has fallen and the swivel hasn’t moved then it must likely have been a good hit. There are of course some players (generally with heavier sticks thrown hard, usually round arm) that can smack the doll right on the end by the swivel pad and the doll will fly and the swivel will spin – this is a doll because it’s propelled with force off the swivel hitting that overhang – just mind your ankles for the stick rebound! 

I find it best to focus on the bottom front of the doll right on the swivel where most of the controversy might happen. It also helps if there’s a darker background than the doll so I tend to adjust my position as caller to suit. Let’s face it – obvious dolls are easy to count – other ones come with practice and experience. This is why sticking up is also a call learning opportunity and the caller can ask the sticker up for an opinion if unsure.

Very early on in my AuntSallyTV ‘career’ I recorded a couple of doll strikes so people could see the difference.  Check them out

On the actually calling again it needs to be repeated that it helps everyone (especially those filling in the scorecard/board) that the number of dolls is called out loud and the total repeated at the end of the players throw (assuming they missed with the last stick!). This leaves no room for error or controversy and the caller’s decision is final.

Don’t forget Registration Night is on the 11th March so get your Team and Competition forms off the homepage and sign on!

Its the Finals Night for the Winter League tonight at Abingdon United FC so pop along to see some good games fingers crossed.

The Summer is coming and hopefully by May we’ll get rid of these heavy April showers which aren’t good for anyone’s doll score!

We’ve done the 8s draw and had 12 teams entered – fixtures will be published this week online ready for the preliminary matches on 3rd May.

The final summer sections will be at the printers soon and distributed as soon as we can, ready for the league start on 10th May.

Further details will be coming soon! 

I’ve recently written a couple of pieces for the website. Mainly to generate some new content for the site but also because I was recently given some feedback over pieces I wrote a couple of years ago which made me think that it wasn’t just a couple of people reading them. Also one of the hardest parts of writing isn’t the writing but having things to write about.

Back in October 2015 I moved from Abingdon to Banbury. I’m not sure if you are aware but Aunt Sally is alive and thriving in Banbury, Bicester, Bampton, Wychwood, Chipping Norton as well as Oxford and Abingdon.

A new set of kit

I’ve played Aunt Sally for over 25 years but never played outside of Abingdon except for a few inter-league games and the odd competition. So I decided it would be a good idea to sign for a local team and see what it was like playing for another pub. I chose The Easington on the Bloxham Road, Banbury because it’s walking distance!

After what seems like my worst season start (in 25 years!!!!) for both leagues I seem to have found my feet. Both leagues have an enormous amount in common apart from the game itself. Aunt Sally attracts characters, I’m not sure why that is but I can confirm it is the same in Abingdon as it is in Banbury. I suppose really it’s because you have 16+ men and women gathering on a weeknight invariably in the pouring rain to play what is honestly a pretty niche game with very little spectator appeal.

So what are the differences then? I should note that all of my following observations are anecdotal in nature. I haven’t spent any time researching the data nor am I about to. Take everything I say with a pinch of salt. So, in Banbury of the pubs and clubs I’ve played at only one had a hocking. Let’s take a minute to think about that. In Banbury they do not have a physical barrier to put your foot against or step up too. They do have a slab or a line clearly marking where you should stand but there is no physical barrier. I find that interesting. It means that in Banbury the cry of, Foot Fault presumably falls on deaf ears since you have no way of telling if they have or not. I don’t know if foot faults are specifically mentioned in the Banbury Aunt Sally rules but its interesting none the less.

One of the biggest differences between the two leagues is the calling sticking up relationship. In Abingdon the Home side call and stick up for both the home and away teams for the entire game. In Banbury it’s slightly different. Basically a member of the opposing team will call for the other team for one leg but the sticking up is done by a member of your own team. This means the calling is always done by the other team and you only call for one leg so reducing the time spent calling allowing you much longer for a beer and chat. Sticking up works by Anchorman sticking up for the first man on then once the first man has thrown the he follows the sticks down and takes the place of the Anchorman and so on. I really like the way this plays out mainly because it means you’re not in the shed for ages in the evening. This means more time for a beer which everyone can get behind!!

Another difference is the pitch length ! In Abingdon we measure from hocking to iron as the 30ft – in some others it’s 30ft to the base of the doll – an extra six inches that could make all the difference!  I didn’t realise this until about halfway through my first season. I believe this is a Banbury only peculiarity, though I would welcome anyone letting me know if I’m wrong.

2014 Summer League Silverware

If there can be such a thing as a hot topic in Aunt Sally it has to be the online score card system introduced last year. I’ve heard some complaints some of which I understand and some of which I don’t. I’m going to take you through a few of the reasons why we, the Committee have introduced it so that perhaps you might understand even if you don’t agree with it. I will say that at the AGM support for the change was voted through in a democratic way by the teams.

Why do it?

It’s like this, the Committee at present has 8 members. All of us have been here for many many years and believe it or not it takes some work organising the League and making sure it operates smoothly, well, as smoothly as is possible. For the previous few years the scores were posted to the League Match Secretary who arranged for all 40 odd cards to be entered each week into the score system we had previously. Now the old system was programmed onto and used an Amiga computer. That’s right in 2014 we were using a program written in 1990 to work out the scores and leagues. That’s 24 years we were using the same program.

When I came to be Chairman I took the task of updating the system used because the old one really had become obsolete, continuing to use it would have meant that when it did eventually fail the League would not have a backup. So we spent some money, quite a bit in fact, to build something that would last us and would be easy to manage.

One of the things about the score cards is it takes a long time to enter them, sure the old way took about an hour to do but relied on someone from the Committee to have the time to manually enter the cards every week. Then the match scores had to be typed up for the newspapers and sent in.  I don’t know about you but I don’t have that time available to me. I knew that whatever the new system we had it must have the ability to have the score cards added by the teams themselves, thereby saving a great deal of time.

So it is a success?

Well the system has been in a year and by and large I think it has been a success. Sure we have had teething troubles but nothing we cannot fix easily. Did you know for instance that some people have said that the scores don’t add up correctly after adding? I shook my head at this for weeks until I saw that some people were putting an X in for a blob. Quite rightly so but of course databases don’t want to see an X they want to see a number 0 (zero!). I’ve had my website coding guy sort out the back end so that even when X is entered it reads it as a 0.

Passwords and usernames have also been an issue. If you have contacted me chairman@abingdonauntsally or the webmaster@abingdonauntsally we have responded instantly and reset or changed your password. Some people are only contacting us through the contact page and for a while the emails weren’t getting through they are now so there was a hold up there I can only apologise for that.

I think the biggest issue has been when some people can’t get into the site or can’t do it they give up and just send the card in without taking a copy. The issue here is we do not know which cards have been entered online and which have not. In fact there is no way without one of us sitting down and manually checking the 160 odd cards we have now accumulated. If we don’t have time to enter the 40 cards each week we definitely don’t have time to sort 160! I need to rely on you to check to ensure that the scores entered are correct for your games and contacting us when they are not – and some people have been and thank you for that. So it does help if you put the match ID on your card when you’ve entered it online.

So far anyone with an issue other than password reset I have phoned and talked through the process. In one instance I’ve been and met up with the Captain and shown them how to do it, actually really enjoyed meeting the Captain of the other team. He now knows how to add the cards and we got to talk about Aunt Sally which is a topic I love and can talk about for hours.

I want and need this to really work for all of us so that it’s easier for the Committee and more transparent for you as teams. It also means we can do some ‘stats’ – so we now have ranking reports that give you your player positions in the total league by average and by total dolls and the webmaster can pull out those sixes and ‘over 14s’ with relative ease as the data is all online.

And finally

If you are having any issues at all or you just aren’t that confident with it, contact me by email. I will get back to you and help you with anything you need. I will even if you want me to arrange a time to meet with you and show you how to do it.

If you have an opinion please hit the comment bubble below and speak up. (You’ll need to login).