Points penalties for Golcar C&BC and Denby Dale

Winter League

The Winter League has a situation unlikely to be experienced by any other League. This is due to Divisions playing on different days of the week. There are situations where a team is promoted or relegated and find themselves changing their matchdays from one day to another. That new day of the week may mean that they cannot raise a team due to personal circumstances or team members already playing in a different winter league. Normally this would result in that team's penalty for their success would be withdrawal from the League. Hardly an incentive for any team!

Rather than lose these teams from winter bowling altogether, the League has always tried to accommodate any team with a genuine reason for declining promotion. Priority is always given to teams involved in providing hosting services but sometimes it is possible to support any team requests with minimal disruption to other teams and the League in general.

However to prevent that team finishing the following season in a promotion place again it has always been the intention to introduce a points penalty to underpin that intent.

Two teams' bids to decline promotion were accepted by the League soon after the end of last season. The Management Committee at their meeting last Friday tackled the issue of deciding on a points penalty for the 2025-26 season for Denby Dale and Golcar C&BC.

Denby Dale finished 2nd in Division 3 last season which was 8 points ahead of Lowerhouses B who were in 3rd position. The decision was taken to penalise Denby Dale 10 points from the start of the 2025-26 season.

Golcar C&BC finished top of Division 8 on 87 points which was 29 points ahead of 3rd placed Mirfield B. The decision was taken to penalise Golcar C&BC 20 points from the start of the 2025-26 season.

Both these penalties were influenced by how many points they were ahead of the third placed team in their division. This penalty will, hopefully, make it fairer for the other teams in each division to counter the threat of those teams in the coming season.

There is an argument that teams should be penalised the full difference in points between themselves and the third placed team who would have been promoted. This would have resulted in an 8-point penalty for Denby Dale and a 29-point penalty for Golcar C&BC. The Management Committee opted for introducing a system where teams would be penalised a minimum of 10 points and a maximum of 20 points depending on their points total and lead over the 3rd placed team. We will learn from this season's decision.