The rest of the league structure for the 2012 season
DIVISION 1
NORTH
Gateshead Senators
Merseyside Nighthawks
Lancashire Wolverines
Shropshire Revolution
Nottingham Caesars
Coventry Jets
West Coast Trojans
CENTRAL/SOUTH
Cambridge Cats
South Wales Warriors
Sussex Thunder
Hampshire Thrashers
East Kent Mavericks
Berkshire Renegades
Kent Exiles
Essex Spartans
NORTH
Dundee Hurricanes
Glasgow Tigers
Edinburgh Wolves
Clyde Valley Blackhawks
Highland Wildcats
Carlise Border Reivers
CENTRAL
Sheffield Predators
Chester Romans
Staffordshire Surge
Lincolnshire Bombers
Crewe Railroaders
DC Presidents
Manchester Titans
WEST
Oxford Saints
Cornish Sharks
Bournemouth Bobcats
Bristol Apache
Gloucester Banshees
EAST
MK Pathfinders
Watford Cheetahs
Bedfordshire Blue Raiders
Maidstone Pumas
Colchester Gladiators
Peterborough Saxons
Other notes:
There will be no relegation from the Premier league in the first season.
Rumours are that Premier regular season fixtures will be all within conference and then the top of North will play second place South and vice versa for the top team of the South.
All players playing Uni Ball will have to transfer to play Senior (Editor - I think this may affect the debt system?)
For the 2012 season the minimal medical cover requirement is a qualified Paramedic with trauma kit
You can still use ambulance cover as in previous years
There are no restrictions on overseas players. This means you can have unlimited Americans, Canadians, Mexicans etc
No player can receive payment or benefits as in previous years
There is a new automated online registration system. Each player, coach, manager etc must register themselves online and pay their own registration.
Here is the previous post on the Premier League re alignment.
Check back tomorrow for our reaction to the alignments as well as all our Tuesday reviews of the NFL and BUAFL action!
Rumours are that Premier regular season fixtures will be all within conference and then the top of North will play second place South and vice versa for the top team of the South.
All players playing Uni Ball will have to transfer to play Senior (Editor - I think this may affect the debt system?)
For the 2012 season the minimal medical cover requirement is a qualified Paramedic with trauma kit
You can still use ambulance cover as in previous years
There are no restrictions on overseas players. This means you can have unlimited Americans, Canadians, Mexicans etc
No player can receive payment or benefits as in previous years
There is a new automated online registration system. Each player, coach, manager etc must register themselves online and pay their own registration.
Here is the previous post on the Premier League re alignment.
Check back tomorrow for our reaction to the alignments as well as all our Tuesday reviews of the NFL and BUAFL action!
Wow, unlimited Non-Europeans....that's horrible, May as well allow teams made up of ALL Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, etc!!
ReplyDeleteI hope that they, at least, restrict Non-Europeans numbers that CAN take the field at same time, maybe no more than 3?
Uni players playing senior works the same as it has in the past except that with the new registration system (which will be used for BUAFL next season) flags up debts. If the debts aren't cleared then players won't appear on rosters for senior. Same goes for players playing National Leagues junior/senior that wish to play uni ball.
ReplyDeleteAll this should stop players playing if they have accrued debts which was the case before. There will still be a debtors/transfers officer on the National Leagues committee that can assess and manually override debt if teams don't have sufficient evidence.
Crewe Railroaders and DC Presidents have yet to formally complete the associate process as i believe they still need to send BAFANL paperwork before the deadline of this coming Saturday. They are the only associate teams that can become full members as the others (Swindon, Exeter and Plymouth) have decided to have another year as associate members. Norwich Devils have also decided to have an associate year to rebuild.
Another big thing to come out of the meeting was the BAFA directors report by Jon Wyse. He gave details as to the future structure of BAFA and its board which will see a radical shake up where all constituent parts will come under the BAFA umbrella. This means BAFCA and BAFRA will not formally exist and members will become BAFA Coaches or Refs. Each part of BAFA will have only one seat/vote on the BAFA Board instead of the current two. The BAFA Board positions will be CEO(Chairman), Director of Coaching, Director of Officiating, Director of National Leagues, Director of BUAFL. These postions will be voted on by the membership (all coaches, refs, players, volunteers etc. Basically anyone who pays a fee to BAFA).
There will also be 4 postions that will be appointed by the board (No membership vote). I can't remember the exact names of these postions but they are things like Director of Business, Director of Elite Perfomance (Team GB, Elite Coaches Group), Director of NFL Relations, Director of Finance. These postions will be open to anybody inside or outside of the BAFA Community.
Not sure on when this process will begin but it looks to be an exciting step forward and should lead to a lot more openness and accountability than in previous years.
I think i have covered everything.
There will be no limit whatsoever on how many foreign players can take the field as this goes against the BAFA Equality Policy which states that people can't be discrimination against based on gender, race, religion, disability, nationality etc
ReplyDeleteWow, that's even worst, a HUGE, HUGE step backwards for BritBall and massive advantage to those who have access to large numbers of Base Personnel and/or 'Throw money at the problem' al la previous Coventry Jets!!
ReplyDeleteI fail to see how it is a step backwards.
ReplyDeleteIf teams are stupid enough to do that for a short term gain then they deserve to fail in the long term. Imports and base personnel are an unreliable way to build a team, all it takes is for the money to dry up (see Coventry Jets 2011) or for an american base to be on alert or personnel to be deployed/transfer for teams to loose a significant portion of their team.
Also the reason for the change as was said at the meeting is "because it goes against BAFA's equality policy which is being worked on hard at the moment to increase our likelihood of meeting the criteria to attract external sources of funding". With the news about the APPG and working with NFL this is something that had to be done to help move the sport forward.
"No player can receive payment or benefits as in previous years"
ReplyDeleteI imagine this will put a significant number of potential imports off, which is good. A couple of guys seriously in-the-know is great for the development of the sport, but teams made up entirely of Van Pelt & friends does nothing for it.
All positive changes - although I wouldn't want to be one of the teams who scraped into the Div 1 play-offs in 2011 and now find themselves in the Prem for two years! As has already been said, overreliance on base personnel has shown up a number of teams in 2011 due to the conflict in Libya.
ReplyDeleteFor the overall strength of the British game, BAFANL (PLEASE can we keep that name for longer than five minutes, I like it!) needs to attract top players from around Europe and keep them coming back. At the minute we fall behind because we aren't attracting top players and (even worse) are losing our better players to European teams (something which I can see happening more frequently in coming years as BUAFL gets stronger). Regardless of the negativity towards Van Pelt and the like, quality import players increase the standard of football in this country and we need to keep that flow up.
Good BUAFL players if they choose to carry on will end up going to European clubs because some countries do pay a wage... seeing our own National Leagues to fall by the wayside.
ReplyDelete