We thought we would do an update on how the season is going and to give you information on the rest of the season and beyond.

KAPPA CUP & 4SPORTS PLATE FINALS

5th May – U13, U7 & U8.
5th May – U9 & U10 (at East Harling FC)
6th May – U14
12th May – U15
13th May – U16
18th May – U17 (7:30pm Kick Off)
19th May – U11
20th May – U12

U11-U16 4Sports Plate kick off at 10:30am, Kappa Cup at 2pm. U7-U10 details will be confirmed by Steve Kenny and Darren Iles. Venue is the FDC Bowthorpe unless stated otherwise.

LEAGUE TROPHIES

Please note that all League winners and runner up trophies will only be available for collection at The FDC Bowthorpe on cup final days. If clubs want to have the teams attend and have trophies awarded on the day please contact us.

REGISTRATIONS

NCYFL was a pilot for online registrations in Norfolk. This was a success and all clubs have benefited by the registration discount given by Norfolk FA. However, it has not been without issues. The search facility on Whole Game System was not fit for purpose and we have experienced issues with players being registered for teams when they should not have been. We had the amnesty on de-registrations to help clubs to resolve some of the issues. It is important for next season that clubs ensure they do have offline consent before registering players. Norfolk FA have told us the search facility will be improved for next season. Due to some issues we have had recently we feel we need to clarify the different playing days for development football. Players are only allowed to be registered for one team in an age group in the league. We give the option to select a Saturday or Sunday as a day to play matches but they are all the same league.

FIXTURES

Our survey says…….
We asked clubs what was most important to them:

  • All fixtures up front for a season.
  • Having a sanction free postponement.
  • Option to select free dates.
  • Fixtures to take account of pitch sharing arrangements.

It is not possible to do all fixtures up front for a season if you allow all or elements of the others. Those who voted said pitch sharing arrangements and the option to have free dates were most important to clubs.

However, we have found that managers are not using the option to have free dates and then they are experiencing issues. There has to be a deadline so Mel can schedule matches effectively. We have pointed out some key dates that managers should consider, Mother’s Day and the Norwich v Ipswich games in particular.

We need clubs to ensure managers have the information on how to plan for the season and to select dates to the deadline. We have had issues with teams in development football cancelling games and electing not to play games where travel is involved. We need to ability match teams and this approach is not fair on those teams who have games cancelled. We do not impose sanction on development games missed. However, next season we will look at restricting entry to trophy events if teams have not played enough development games, more details will be in the pre-season briefings.

The Beasts from the East have disrupted the fixture programme and we still have several teams who have several games to play to finish the season. Mel as fixture secretary is receptive to any teams bringing forward fixtures where they can if they have free dates or can accommodate a mid-week fixture but please communicate with him to do this. Mel will always give the required notice where games are rearranged but teams can be more flexible between themselves.

REFEREE APPOINTMENTS (U16, U17 & U18)

U17 was a new age group for us this season and as part of this we have been appointing referees for the majority of all their fixtures and Premiership U16s. We have increased the engagement of referees over the season and have been able to appoint referees for other U16 divisions and other age groups as well. The weekends where there are County Cup fixtures remain a challenge to get enough referees though. We want to increase the number of games in the league that are officiated by a qualified referee. We are offering a bursary to anyone who completes the qualification and officiates the required number of games. We aim to expand to U18 as well as U17 next season but this will depend on have enough league committee capacity to run this.

LEAGUE APPLICATIONS FOR 2018-19

We have now launched our new Club Administration system on our website which includes the process for applying to the league for next season. The process for clubs with teams that competed this season should be quite simple with as much information as possible carried forward. New teams will need to supply more information.

The website will also give us functionality to invoice for fees and fines. It will also allow clubs to see what they owe and should help club treasurers see their club position in one place. The league agreement declaration will also be completed via the website. We are trying to reduce the amount of administration work that clubs and the league have to complete. Once applications are received we will compile list of teams for each age group. We have to agree a constitution for the AGM, for development age groups we will issue a list of teams. These teams will not be sorted into playing groups until close to the start of the season this is because they change so much between the AGM and the start of the season. For competitive age groups we will publish the finishing positions at the end of the season and apply the promotion and relegation policy. New teams joining the league will be voted in but will be allocated according to ability after the AGM. There will be a closing date in July for teams to withdraw and for any further new teams to join then the age groups will be closed. This will enable divisions to be finalised and fixtures to be scheduled for the start of the season. Please note there is no fine for withdrawing prior to the AGM and there is a reduced fine between the AGM and middle of July. After that a full sanction will apply.

2018-19 RULE CHANGES

The league committee have reviewed the recently issued Respect information and have decided that for this season we will not be adopting / proposing a rule for Respect Monitors to be mandatory. We still recommend this as best practice but feel that making mandatory puts pressure on clubs and the behaviour ratings, although based on opinion, don’t warrant this action. This will be kept under review and if behaviour deteriorates then this may have to change.

There was significant transfer activity this season with a lot of this taking place either before the start of the season and in the early part of the season. This put a lot of additional administration pressure on the league committee. We are not sure if this was partly due to the registration system picking up on issues more effectively or not. We do know that other youth leagues experienced similar problems. All the youth leagues will be adopting a transfer window for next season. This means that clubs will need to ensure that they properly register players for the start of the season as they will not be able to transfer until later in the season. The transfer window will operate from 1 November to end of March. More details to follow with the AGM papers.

AGM

We will be issuing correspondence for the league AGM on June 7th at Horsford Village Hall. The AGM is early this year so we avoid clashing with the World Cup.