Should we move SEMLA to the Summer?

[S_24_LAX]

Don't ask me Mate. I am merely a player, manager, coach, referee of some 41 years experience.

[Mat P]

What about holding the Southern Flags as a Summer competition, that would free up some weekends in the Winter and give a practical trial to the Summer games idea.

Really good shout.

[Chilli]

There have already been several Summer League/Tournament experiments over the last 15 years in the South.

They start on a flush of enthusiasm, reduce to a smaller number when the locations are announced and shrivel to nothing by the end of the period.

There's 12 month lacrosse already all over Europe for those who want it, you could probably spend the entire summer going from tournament to tournament if you had the time and money.

The truth is, as has already been stated, even the keenest players can only commit a portion of their year to playing, so the question is whether moving the league season to Spring/Summer would be better or worse for the game.

Running any form of knockout competition across the wide distances of the South is problematical as is shown by the repeated 10-0 walkovers.
Clubs make rough estimates of the likelihood of winning vs the cost/time to travel and decide accordingly, fact, it's basic common sense.
The problem has been that each time a proposal has been made to stop cross region games in the early stages, the Clubs have voted to keep them.

However, the SEMLA Committee has a proposal from Nik Roberts which received general approval at the last SEMLA meeting to regionalise the early stages of the Flags, detailed changes to be made before the Clubs have another chance to vote.

[Topping]

Why take the drastic step of moving the entire season to the summer. Why not initially try a winter break, finish in December an then start back in Feb. Will make the season a bit longer but as a first step it may help and will not interfere with the big issue of development in schools as we will still be playing well within the term times.

As 'the rest of europe' has been mentioned once or twice, I thought I'd add my experience of the German system.

The southern german region is broadly comparable to the SEMLA area (broadly!) in that it is split into Bavaria and Baden Wuttenburg (East and west respectively) plus a cross regional premiership. The games are then played on 'game days' where 3 teams meet up at a designated club and each play two games, the hosting team usually getting the 1st and 3rd matches. The dates and locations are decided by the association. This means 3 Saturdays (or Sundays) of lacrosse between September and the beginning of November (plenty of time for other halves, quite possibly easier to fit around work). The dates have just been released for the return matches and our first game is the 21st April (FLAGS finals weekend I believe), there may be some earlier but the fixtures aren't published online for all to see. They then run until may (German Unis don't throw out until end of July).

Pros:
Fewer days for people to free up
Fewer instances of driving a long way
Festival atmosphere and sociableness on the day, which I could imagine being nicer for spectators.
Avoiding the worst of the weather (there's still a couple of inches of snow outside my window)
Potential to have better weather and student players (I'd imagine that a SEMLA fixture list based on these lines would resume earlier)

Cons:
Less felexibility - rearrangements would require a lot more effort (that said see pro #1)
Playing 2 games back to back relatively frequently, perhaps leading to smaller 2nd teams and 3rd teams being used to swell senior teams.
Potential dissatisfaction over venues, hosting etc - one for the fixtures committee, most likely solution 'suck it up'
Other organisation issues (I have to say I can see SEMLA it doing better than it is here - if you want to moan about SEMLA just thank God its not the DLaxV)
Greater importance of fewer days - goal keeper ill/hungover/getting married? Tough.
Long downtime between games, especially in the break. (Although this appears to be the case for may people anyway this year)

It has the potential for the best of both worlds and also for some issues, but is still food for thought.

[Mr.Stanford]

not a fan of the double up. more lax days for me

[6x6]

Perhaps you can help educate this Yank, although some might say why bother trying, you'd be wasting your time. Regardless, I'll push on. A couple of the cons to the idea have been lack of access to the pitch and also weddings, more family stuff, holidays etc, going on in the summer.

From an outsiders perspective one thing I find that is truly unique about lax in GB is the connection with the clubs. I think it's great and wish we had something like that in the states. However, as the topic is talking about radical change, couldn't other areas be examined as well such as where you play and when?

Aren't school grounds (from primary up to univeristy), county parks or other options available to hold games to alleviate the competition with cricket and other sports for the club pitch? Couldn't you hold matches on weeknights? Not too many weddings at 7 pm on Tuesdays. Didn't I read that BUCS games are held on Wednesdays? so some should be used to playing then. Would still allow for family time on weekends. If game rained out on Tues (I know this rarely happens) might be easier to reschedule to another week day. Might actually be able to get the same amount of games in during a shorter season so might not interfere with long summer holidays etc. Home game on Tues, away game on Thurs.