At a meeting of the Committee on Monday 20th May a number of important decisions were agreed which affect our 2024 Competitions. These affect all entrants already received and those which teams or individuals were about to make about entering.
Despite extending the closing date until yesterday we are still well down on the entries particularly for the team events which were scheduled to take place on Sunday June 9th. With only 2 confirmed entries for the team 5’s, 3 entries for the Team 4’s and 5 entries for the Red Drive 3’s competition the Committee decided to postpone the Sunday June 9th competitions until later in the Summer. We really can’t justify staging competitions where the number of entries do not make the Competitions meaningful.
We decided to extend the entry date with a new closing date of Sunday June 16th (Father’s Day) for all Competitions and subject to the number of entries received by that date we hope that we can re-arrange a suitable date and venue to hold these team competitions which have been held annually for over 50 years!!
Entries for all Competitions will remain open until this mid June date and we already have a better level of entry for both the pairs and singles competitions which, together with the Captains and Secretaries Competitions will take place in early August as planned. All Competitions will, as agreed, at the AGM, earlier in the year still be held on Sundays.
The Committee also discussed the planned competitions exclusively for teams in Section B and below for which no entries have yet been received. Again we are keen to hold at least pairs and singles competitions for players in Sections B, C, D , E and F to encourage as many people as possible playing Competitions and we are proposing new trophies for these this year.
Finally on Competitions we are encouraged by the number of newcomers to our league this year and to recognise that we are looking to possibly hold another couple of Competitions (you will note that we are never put off entirely despite the lack of entries) so later this year we are looking to stage a ladies pairs competition open to all registered lady players (mixed from any team) and an under 25’s competition again open to all registered players. We will post entry forms for these two proposed new competitions together with the very flexible rules in the next few days.
Finally Competitions are an essential part of our heritage and we don’t want to lose them, we actually want more not less hence our discussions and decisions taken at Committee tonight.
So please get your entries in too many is not a problem too few is!
It’s the old adage it you don’t enter, the Competitions may not be viable this year and into the future, and they are a significant part of our heritage!
The trophies both team and individual also represent a very sizeable cost to the Association so that has to be justified because it’s your money we spend! So, the more entries the merrier is certainly true in this case.
Remember entry costs only £1 per person for all of our competitions so buy your ticket to enter now!!!
(Chairman’s Remarks: – it’s a cliche but competitions can test your mettle so much more than a weekly game, as Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor from the darts world said “You can’t practice ******** yourself” – to be a better player practice only goes so far, competitions sorts the cool from the collapsing which also means it can be anyone’s win. Get your entries in and see if you have the ‘right stuff’.)
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