2019-20 Season Conclusion

The League Executive Committee have decided to award winners and runners-up, or joint winners, based on results so far and anticipated results in remaining games, as follows:

Division 1 winners: Newton Abbot Batmen
Division 1 runners-up: Newton Abbot Buzzards

Division 2 joint winners: Marldon & Torbay Academy 3

Division 3 joint winners: Torre Titans & Newton Abbot Owls

Division 4 winners: Torbay Academy 6
Division 4 runners-up: The Grove

Rationale:
We felt that it was wrong to void the season at this late stage.  Players have given their all for 90% of the season, some placings are mathematically certain and others very likely; voiding the season would be unfair on them.  There should be a positive outcome for the players for all their effort.
Playing more fixtures is theoretically attractive but impractical at the moment and likely to remain so for a long time.  There are problems with venues and many players won't want to play even if such matches can be arranged.  Doubles are banned by TTE and are likely to remain so for a long time.  The longer we wait the more likely it is that players will just move away from the area (some already have).  So we felt that this wasn't on option.
For winners and runners-up awards there were a variety of different methods of working these out proposed, including simply awarding based on the points as they were when the season stopped, points-per-game, applying results from the first half of the season to the unplayed matches, and other methods.  Each method has some merits and some demerits.  The principle we decided to apply is that if each method produced the same final winner and runner-up we would award the winner and runner up on that basis. If different methods produced different league placings we would award joint positions. 
This resulted in the proposed awards above.
Division 1 is clear cut; divisions 2 & 3 are both close considering the second place team has a game in hand.  Division 4 on the face of it is very close with just 2 points separating the top 3 teams. However looking at who those three teams are playing in their final match shows why their positions remain unaltered whichever method is used.