Dear Oldham & District League Members,
I hope you have had an exceptional start to 2018, I look forward to seeing you soon. I have a few updates for you today after the first committee meeting of the year that I’d like to share. Apologies for the length but I will hopefully split it up for clean reading.
I'd firstly like to apologise for the confusion in the end of the season, we, as a committee want the League to play as many games as possible and to have the most enjoyment for all members. As some may be aware, we had a couple of teams drop out before the start of the season and a couple retire through the season, which has caused a change in plan and change in dates, apologies for this.
Divisional Split at the end of the current fixtures:
I have been speaking with TT365, the company that run our website on the best way to implement our split at the end of the current fixtures. The new fixtures will go live on the website the day after the FINAL fixture is played/inputted on the website as the fixtures are created based on final position, so they cannot be confirmed until the end as we won’t know finishing positions. (We will have a rough idea but do not want to confirm just in case things change.) The Divisional Split applies to Division 2-5 only.
For all 2-5 division teams, please can you play and send your remaining fixtures & results by no later than 9th February, please, to allow for a smooth transition into the split and cup.
We are looking at 5 rounds of the split, 4 fixtures for each team in each division (except the 5th where there will be 3 fixtures due to there being only 8 teams.). The Division will be split and named 2A / 2B, 3A / 3B etc. Each team will be given a letter (to be confirmed on final position) and the fixtures will hopefully (barring any issues) be played as follows:
NB. It will be posted who is A, B, C, D, E / V, W, X, Y, Z when the fixtures are complete. There will be a gap between the end of the initial season and the start of the split to allow teams to sort rooms out and any queries.
Week 1: (W/C 19th February) Week 2: (W/C 5th March)
A v E B v D C has a free week D v A C v B E has a free week
V v Z W v Y X has a free week Y v V X v W Z has a free week
Week 3: (W/C 12th March) Week 4: (W/C 19th March)
E v B D v C A has a free week A v C E v D B has a free week
Z v W Y v X V has a free week V v X Z v Y W has a free week
Week 5: (W/C 2nd April)
B v A C v E D has a free week
W v V X v Z Y has a free week
The League Cup - First round draw now live under Handicap Cup heading.
The Cup fixtures will be slotted in between the weeks above, along with the first two weeks already on the fixtures page:
Cup Fixtures:
W/C 12th February ROUND TWO
W/C 26th February ROUND THREE.
W/C 26th March ROUND FOUR
W/C 2nd April/9th April ROUND FIVE
W/C 9/16 April FINAL
The League Cup this year is an inter-divisional handicap cup, where the handicap of each player/team will differ each week depending on the opponent. If you are in the 3rd Division playing a 1st Division team, your handicap will be higher than it would if you were playing a 5th Division team. It is worked out the week before and all handicaps published before the start of the handicap week. Due to the size of the cup, we will have 6 rounds of fixtures and this will go into the start of April to accommodate this.
Next season, we will look at bringing the cup into the first half of the season to spread the cup load. If you have any questions about the cup, please ask. As I have said, the fixtures will be slotted into the split fixtures, but this cannot be done until the initial part of the season is complete. Please be patient with me. All handicaps will be made live the week before the cup fixture.
The Oldham Closed Championship
Oldham Closed Championships - Sunday, 04th March 2018 at Hulme Grammar School.
Entry for the Oldham Closed Championship is now open. Please use the form under the 'Oldham Championship' heading OR click here OR use the Handbook form for entry. When you pay online, please add a reference with who it is from and what it is for as we will be getting many and it is tough to keep track. Cheque is also accepted: Made payable to Oldham & District Table Tennis League.
To pay online: Account 22498518 - Sort Code 050646
Please note: You can only enter one of the two: Over 40s singles & Over 50s singles. Any queries, please email me.
You can deliver to my address but there will be a delay in acknowledging your form as I am not at home very often. If you do not have the ability to email it me, please give your entry to someone who can.
Again, apologies for the length, but there is a lot of exciting things coming up and I wanted to share everything with you. We greatly appreciate that there are a lot of fixtures to be played but this will ensure an exciting end to the season in both the league and the cup and I’d just like to thank you all for playing this season, so far, it is shaping up to be very close in all divisions. See you all soon and good luck for the rest of the season.
Kind regards,
Jacob Reilly-Cooper
Chairman, Oldham & District Table Tennis League
Jacob.Reilly.Cooper@gmail.com