2019 Pennant Draws Released
The draws for both the Men’s and Women’s weekend Pennants for 2019 have been released.
Men’s Schedule:
In the men, there will be 5 grades, and many of the Clubs’ grading requests have had to be adjusted. (Of the original nominations there were 8 teams requesting grade 1, 1 team grade 2, 8 in Grade 3 – 6 in Grade 4 – 8 in Grade 5 – 2 in Grade 6 – clearly this was not doable without major shuffling!)
Format: Men: Grade 1 will play each team once only. This was the preferred method by those who completed the grade 1 survey. Grades 2-4 will play the full home and away series (10 rounds). Grade 5 will also play each other once only, with several grade byes. All grades will play a top four final series.
Selectors and players should be aware that when Grade 1 has round byes, players who played Grade 1 in the round prior to the grade bye will not be allowed to play in a lower grade.
Women’s schedule:
In the women’s grades, we had 7 teams nominate for Grade 1, and 2 in Grade 2. Again, this was clearly not doable so there will be only one grade, with each team playing each other once. There will be a double header on the weekend of 16-17 February. The grade will not be split. The top four teams will play in the final series.
Both the Men and Women will play their semi finals and preliminary finals on Saturday 27 April at the venue of the minor premiers. The Grand Finals will all be played at the one venue on Sunday 28 April. An announcement on the Grand Final Venue will be made shortly.
As per previous years, all teams are to be entered online prior to commencement of games and results entered as soon as possible following completion. We will be using the SportsTG system again, so login details and passwords will be required by those responsible for entering data. These will be sent out early in the new year.
2019 Conditions of Play:
There will be minimal changes to the CoP from 2018 which will be released early in the new year. However, Clubs and players need to be aware of two significant changes – firstly in relation to wet weather (clarifications on notifications and replaying of), and secondly to the starting times. For 2019, the default starting time for ALL matches (Men’s and Women’s, all season) will be 9:30am (TE 9:15am). This change is in response to the overwhelming preferences expressed by players in the survey. Having said that, clubs are still at liberty to play at an alternative time, upon mutual agreement. On this note, I will be seeking a single point of contact from each club (that will be made public) to facilitate easier rescheduling.
Green Fees:
In the new year, I will be seeking advice from Clubs as to whether (and how) they propose to deal with green fees. This information will be distributed to all clubs prior to the commencement of round 1. I repeat earlier advice that the option of whether to charge or not change lies with the ‘parent’ Clubs, and Bowls ACT cannot enforce a ruling one way or another. We can only strongly recommend that any system is consistently applied.