SKITTLERS in the Wellington Ex-Services League will be back in action next month – but only in the singles competition.

The league’s management committee held a meeting last week ‘to discuss a way forward in order we could resume playing in a safe and enjoyable environment.’

League secretary Andy Kemp fed back to the committee some teams’ thoughts on resuming. It is apparent that several teams are not keen about starting in the near future and the committee understand.

League chairman David Bright issued the following statement to players: Division B for the 2019-2020 season will be considered complete; the outstanding match between King Pins and Foresters will have no effect on any of the league standings and this match will be declared a tie.

Division A: At the moment we are still trying to work out if we can possibly complete the league in a way that is deemed to be fair to all teams; we have looked at several ‘mathematicewal’ solutions such as averaging points per game but this really does not affect the standings as most teams have all played 26 games. We are looking at other ways in which we can resolve this such as mirroring first half results. We hope to have a couple of options to put before you. If any option is deemed not to be fair then we will void the entire Division A season.

We hope to complete the singles tournament over the following two Fridays, the 4th and 11th of September. This will give us an opportunity to see how practical it would be to restart. Full hygiene and social distancing requirements will, of course, be in place. At the end of this message we have laid out what we as a league can put into place to help with this. Competition organiser Darren Sparks will be in contact with players remaining in the competition to see if they wish to participate.

We would consider holding a competition between any teams who wish to partake, but this will require a bit of flexibility from teams as to what nights we can play on. If we have teams from Thursday and Friday then obviously we will have to utilise both of these days, and some pubs may require us to play on a Wednesday as their numbers are restricted. It may be some teams do not have enough players to make it eight a side, so we are suggesting such measures as if one team has six players and the other eight all players can play but the team with eight players count their top six scores either to decide a result. At least everyone who wants to will have the chance to play.

We wish to hold a socially distanced annual meeting/captain’s meeting at the Football Club on Friday, September 18, where we will put some proposals before the meeting and to discuss any ideas yourselves may have. As ever we encourage your ideas. Please feel free to send them to Andy Kemp or David Derrick.

The date and venue for proposed annual meeting/captain’s meeting will be confirmed in due course. All teams will be notified.