BAFANL: Farnham Knights take a year out! What now?

With the sad news yesterday that the Farnham Knights would be closing down senior operations for the 2012 season and returning in 2013 in division 2 one huge question was thrown into the spotlight.

How else could BAFANL have changed the league and/or schedule in the Premier League?

We've been discussing this at Double Coverage and have come up with 4 possible permutations for you to mull over:

EDIT: AFTER WRITING THIS ARTICLE WE FOUND THAT IT HAS ALREADY BEEN DECIDED WHAT BAFANL ARE GOING TO DO. THEY HAVE ANNOUNCED THAT EACH TEAM PLAYING FARNHAM WILL BE AWARDED A 1-0 WIN (Option 2)!


1) BAFANL keeps the current league structure, but changes the schedule so every team still plays 10 games.
This is by far the most implausible of the four options, but we had to add it in the interest of the article.

This change would have meant that 5 (or 10 depending on how things are scheduled) teams would play another team 3 times (or 2, schedule dependant) instead of the regular two. This would have raised all kinds of issues with fairness in scheduling, as well as causing travelling teams potential headaches.


2) BAFANL keeps the current league schedule, but awards each team that was to play Farnham a 1-0 win
A common occurrence in the BUAFL when teams have games called off, this is the easiest option in terms of scheduling. It could however cause a headache if some teams face Farnham and others did not because of the scoring for and against.

If the fixtures are split north and south it gives the Southern teams the advantage of only playing an 8 game season instead of 10 games for the North.

3) BAFANL keeps the league structure the same and promotes a team from Division 1 South to fill Farnham's spot.
These next two options could cause contention because they would have to decide between one of several teams that could step up into the Premiership at short notice. It does solve a headache in Division 1 though, by evening up the two leagues (Division 1 South currently has 9 teams, North has 8), but the schedule would need shuffling around a bit for the Division 1.

At a glance Sussex Thunder and Cambridgeshire Cats are the two teams that stand out as possibilities, with Sussex only recently being demoted to division 1 they might hold the edge in this type of decision.

4) BAFANL changes the league structure by demoting a Northern team to division 1 North and Premier League teams play an 8 game season.
On a personal note I believe this is what should happen anyway. I've always felt that a ten game season for an amateur American football league is a little too much and reducing the games should improve quality (less player turnover due to injury etc), but that is another topic (and another article!) entirely!

BAFANL would demote one of the new teams brought up in the re alignment (Bulls, Falcons, Mustangs or Rams) in the Premier North to Division 1 leaving Premier League North and South with 5 teams each. EKP and Tamworth + 3 in the North and Blitz, Warriors, O's, Cardinals and Aztec's in the south. Each team plays every team in their division home and away in an 8 game season.

In division one you now have two 9 team divisions that can use the same schedule structure BAFANL had for the Division 1 south and carry on as normal.

Obviously this will leave one team feeling very hard done by, but then again maybe one of the teams that came up feels that they aren't ready for the top division yet and another couple of years in division one would do them well?

Check the Facebook page for a poll and let us know which you think is the best option.