Avon Leagues and Coronavirus

Hi.

With the news full of Coronavirus and more and more of normal life shutting down, Michael, Wendy and I have taken a look at the situation w.r.t. to our squash leagues.

At the moment, the clubs are open and most players are keen to play but it's increasingly clear that it's only a matter of time before the clubs start closing and, more importantly, players start isolating or just want to minimse their public contact. Bristol Uni, for instance, has already asked their students to head home this week.

We have therefore decided to formally stop both the mixed and the ladies leagues effective immediately.

Teams and players are welcome to play their fixtures if they can and they want to but there will be no pressure to do so and no consequence of not. In each case, it will be up to both captains to agree if they'd like to play or not and with however many players would like to play. Food will also be optional. Please be sensible.

If you like, you can still enter results into the badsquash system for the rankings but they won't count from a team perspective. They will continue to be weighted as a league match.

We probably won't be able to regroup until early summer (who knows...) so there won't be any play-offs either. That gives us time to decide what to do with the leagues in preparation for the Autumn season. We will probably take a look at what has happened up to this point and use our judgement for an appropriate starting point. The captains have all been asked for their opinions and we all agree to put the league on hold though there are varying opinions on how to manage promotion/relegation for Autumn. It seems every team has plans for a miraculous come-back! More on that when we have a plan.

With most weeks spoken for throughout the year and a significant pause right now it will not be possible to catch up so we'll just have a draw a line at this point and forgoe the remaining fixtures. To be clear, that means the fixtures this week will not count towards the league but can be played as friendlies.

We are not alone. The Welsh Leagues stopped on Friday.

Any questions, please reply or mail [email protected] for the mixed, [email protected] for the ladies and we'll post answers back here so we've got it all in one place.

These are difficult times. Let's get through this and we'll hopefully regroup for the summer league.

Take care,

    Richard, Michael and Wendy. And the Committee who have been in and contributing to the discussion.