Restart time for 5 divisions

Winter League

The five divisions in the Winter League that haven't started their 2025-26 fixture programmes are all scheduled to get their seasons up and running over the next week. Each host club sets its own start date depending upon the work programme on their green following the end of the 2025 Summer season.

The table below shows the start dates for Divisions 1, 2, 5 and 6. In addition, we also have a new 7-Week season for a new Division 10. This has been set up to provide a winter bowling taster for 8 teams that all applied to join the League after the 1 August deadline. Rather than dismiss these applications, Lindley Lib kindly stepped forward to offer their green for 7 weeks to run a short half-season competition.

This Division will play the well-tried format of the other Divisions but with no guarantee of promotion for the top two teams at the end of the shortened season. In addition, bowlers who only bowl for Division 10 teams will not be eligible to enter the Winter Cup or the Pairs KO competitions. However, Division 10 bowlers will be able to play for other Winter League teams after the Christmas break. Should they play one match for any other team then they will become eligible to enter either/both of our knock-out competitions.

Two of the new teams (Skel Windmill and Thongsbridge) in Division 10 are from clubs joining the League for the first time. Whereas five of the 8 new teams are from clubs that already have other teams in the League with Lindley Lib adding a 4th and 5th team to the ranks. The odd one out being Rastrick who don't fit into either of those categories. Rastrick withdraw from the League at the end of last season due to anticipated team-raising difficulties. Those difficulties have eased over the following weeks to such an extent that they applied to rejoin the League and they now sit in the new Division 10.

The Rastrick team was the second team to withdraw from the League at the end of last season, Dalton being the other one. They realised soon after resigning that they could field a full team anyhow and asked that their resignation be withdrawn, which the League was pleased to do, and they resume where they left off, that is relegated to Division 5.