Thursday, February 24

Well you lot are very quiet aren't you!

The identity of our mysterious catholic club poster has been revealed as Derek's daughter. Marvellous.

Anyway, Cliff, Nick F and I attended a league meeting on Tuesday during which a number of issues relating to umpiring and discipline were raised. A key note to come from it was that the league is hoping to put into place a better reporting system for incidents on the field. At present very few of the minor incidents are reported, and it's really only the very serious stuff that's getting through - whether this is due to inconsistencies within the umpires, fear of retaliation or whatever, the situation is not necessarily perfect.

One possible way forward is to alert the league officials should minor incidents occur, get the clubs involved at that stage to look at discipline in-house, and that way possibly prevent more serious blow-ups happening with the same players/teams at a later date.

I think we're all aware of incidents over the years that haven't been reported, fortunately we have not witnessed anything THAT serious in our own games (at least nothing that's come to actual blows), the real meaty stuff seems to happen elsewhere - thankfully.

Other than that, an umpiring crisis is potentially looming - anyone who fancies getting involved in umpiring would be a welcome boost to the league. I think we have 5 active umpires affiliated in some way to our club (Neville, Steve, Gordon, Derek Jackson and Clive), so we can't really be seen not to be getting involved, but there's plenty of scope for more.

Not a lot else to report, other than a decent turnout and nice to see some familiar faces, including Derek (Catholics), Joe and Nigel from ELPM, Emmy from Robbies and Mark Parky and Chall from Glodwick.