WESTON & TRENT VALLEY DARTS LEAGUE

Since the letter below was put on the website things have moved on. 

The Castle men's darts team are no longer in the league, all matches against the Castle have now been altered to byes in the fixtures. Any results from matches, including 9-0 claims, will be voided and the league table will be amended at the next update. This is not a satisfactory outcome to the situation, but given the facts, it was an inevitable one.

Mike Smith

The letter below was written by the League Chairperson, Mr. Terry Rogers, please take a moment to read it.

I feel that it is now time to come to the aid of our beleaguered secretary. At the A.G.M for the Weston Trent Darts League Mike Smith was put forward to take over the day to day running of the league, he was proposed for the job by Alan Hartley, a well respected player in the league and an ex secretary, he was elected to the position unopposed. Before the meeting started I had a brief conversation with Alan, where he told me of Mike’s enthusiasm to do the job but with very little experience, Alan said he would do anything he could to help him, my reply at the time was to say to Alan, that this would be excellent because with his knowledge of the league and his length of time spent on the committee his help would be invaluable.

At the same meeting I was asked to take on the job of Chairman of the league, a job I was happy to take on, as long as everyone was aware that I would endeavour to make sure that each team complied with the league rules, and that we as a committee would make sure that league tables, results ect. were available to the teams in the league, and that every committee member would have a vote within the elected officers and they must always use that vote for the good of the league and the players in it, and for no personal gain for their own respective teams. If elected I informed the meeting that we would hold a Captains meeting on the Thursday following each four match span of the league, and that any captain who had any dispute, would be more than welcome to attend and state their case to the committee.

 Graham Jellyman, the landlord of both Libby’s and the Castle, and I have to say, someone I have always had the greatest respect for, spoke at this point saying that the meeting did not need to hear me say these things and as a committee elected by the captains of the teams present we should get on with it. I was dually elected.

The league started as soon as we were able to get the fixtures out to all teams, and I have to say that this was down to the efforts of Mike.

 Mike advised the committee that he had not received the result sheet from the Castle within the permitted time scale, for their game against the Lamb and Flag, and as such he would be deducing a point from the Castle as per the rules (see rule 22 for clarification). He was advised by the committee, who informed him that if that was the rule then he was within his rights to do so, and that he was to inform the team captain of his decision and advise him  that he would have the right to appeal the decision at the next meeting on the 5^th August 2008 at Great Haywood club. The meeting would start at 7.30 that evening, as Mike at that time had no means of contacting the captain, as no contact details or registration forms had been sent in (which I am informed by Mike is still the case) he spoke with Matt Alcock at the Greyhound/Castle match on the 16^th July, to inform of the right to appeal. I also spoke to Graham late on the same night when he threatened to remove his team from the league before any appeal was made or heard, and asked him to reconsider his decision and attend the appeal meeting to put forward his case.

A comment was then posted on the league website by Alan Hartley, which is available for all players to read, and if this has since been removed I am sure that Mike has a copy available for all to read. At the next meeting it was felt by the committee that the comments made were not helpful to Mike, who as I outlined earlier was new to the job, and that as a member of the committee Alan had promised to advise Mike on difficult situations, and that his comments on the website were undermining him, in what was already a difficult job. This was the opinion of the committee in general, and not just one or two people, the captain of the Castle did not attend the meeting, but did speak to Mike via the website to say how sorry he was that the results were late. He had been away on holiday and he had asked Graham Jellyman to ensure the result sheets were sent in on time (a copy of this email is available on the league website News page, however it was posted without a reply address).

I find the whole situation very sad to be honest, but I believe that we as a committee and as players in the league we have to stand behind the person we elected to be secretary of the league. It is his job to enforce the rules as they are set out at the A.G.M., sometimes by enforcing these rules a decision will go against a side, and sometimes it will go in a sides favour, but we have a set of rules to play by which were passed forward for the 2008 season, with no teams asking for them to be changed at the A.G.M..

We now have a situation where a valued side is not playing in the league, and each side that is due to play has to make contact with the Castle to find out if they will be turning up to play. The last captain to do this was Alfie Baker, who was informed by Graham that they had not left the league, but would play one or two selective games until the end of the season. I must state that I was informed of this, not as chairman of the league, but as captain of the Bankhouse ‘A’ darts team. I do not find this acceptable, as captain of the Bankhouse this situation should have been sorted out at the meeting of 5^th August. A team that has not fulfilled its fixtures up to this date, can now at this late date, influence the final league tables. In the interest of the league, and darts in general, Mr. Jellyman and Mr. Alcock should sit down together with the committee and sort out their differences, as the team is a great loss to the league.

My final comment is this I believe that this league has an excellent committee, each person on that committee has a vote on every decision made by it. We are endeavouring to address the problems we inherited, and given time we will sort them out, and we will stand behind our secretary on the decisions he makes, as long as they are made using the rules of the league.

Mr. Terry Rogers.