Following the SWVA AGM at the weekend, entries are now open for next season, see attached form and entry rules. These can also be found on the SWVA website at https://www.swva.org.uk/competitions. The entry fees and deposits are the same as last year.
Key dates are as follows:
- Closing date for entries – 12th July 2024
- Draft fixtures – second week in August – note that this date may be dependent on when the NVL fixture dates become available
- Ratification of fixtures 2 weeks later (hopefully by 26th August)
- Season start – beginning of October
Please make sure that your nominated contact is available during the August period to ensure that court bookings are confirmed and fixtures ratified.
There have been a few rule changes this season, so please make sure that you do read the rules carefully and in particular see the following sections for updates on the rules:
- 1 c) – all team names must have an easy geographical location for your team and be unique across all divisions in line with VE NVL naming conventions
- 6 e) updated scoresheet rules to account for the fact we don’t have multi-copy scoresheets anymore. The SWVA is also looking at producing our own scoresheets so that we can include registration numbers – please see additional notes on the entry form.
- 8 – added promotion and relegation information
- 16 – added new rules regarding referee registration and use of registered referees. Please also see the additional notes on the entry form.
The changes around the referee requirements is due to having received a number of complaints and general gripes about the standard of refereeing in the SW League last season. We have always had the option to enforce the requirement for all referees to be qualified and registered and please also note Rule 14 e), however we would rather encourage people to take on officiating duties and I know a lot of teams like to share it around their teams. This season, thanks to Richard and Nacho’s willingness to run a number of webinars we are hoping to have freely available additional support material for those wanting a refresher and/or to learn more. To ensure that we have people within each team taking responsibility for the standard of officiating we are building a referee register, which will also allow Richard and Nacho to ensure that material is directed to the right people. We will be actively monitoring refereeing this season and this will be fed into the review to see whether we need to take any additional steps, so we are asking all teams to please pay more attention to their officiating duties!
We will also be updating the websites and fixtures lists to be consistent with the SW Rules and entry forms in terms of use of gender naming, using “Women’s” instead of “Ladies”.
The SW Veteran’s Tournament has been booked into Riverside Leisure Centre in Exeter on Sunday 24th November 2024 and more information and the entry process will be out shortly.
Regards,
Rachel Swindell
