CA Tournament Regulations Updated for the 2020 Season

[<<] [>>] by Samir Patel
1st February 2020 (CqE Official News)

The Croquet Association publishes Tournament Regulations to provide clubs, tournament officials and players with a consistent approach to running all tournaments published in the CA Calendar.

The full text of the Tournament Regulations that apply to the 2020 season are published on this website. The principal changes made in the 2020 edition are as follows:

Changes have been made throughout to reflect the new CA governance model. Some responsibilities and powers previously falling to the CA Council now fall to the Executive Board.
C1(c): Removal of the requirement to include a list of handicap changes from the requirements for returns from tournaments. It is now the players responsibility to update their handicap. The regulation has also been updated to recognise the existing procedure relating to the Levy for tournaments that use the online tournament entry system.
C2(a)(9), C3(a)(1) and P3(b): The definition of the Allocation Date has been made consistent. Entries received before the Allocation Date should be considered together on that date.
C2(b)(3): When a Championship knockout is preceded by a Swiss or Blocks, the knockout must contain at least four players (i.e. a play-off between block winners is insufficient for a Championship knockout).
C2(b)(6): The word 'Charity' within event titles will have a defined meaning from the 2021 season. This will relate to the nature of the charitable cause and the proportion of money raised to be donated to the charity. Approval will be required before its use.
C3(a)(3): For events where allocation is by ranking grade, players with no such ranking grade are only to be allocated places after all players with a ranking grade have been accepted. Such players are allocated by lowest handicap.
C3(a)(3), F1(a)(3), F2(a)(1): For players who have not played sufficient ranking games, their ranking grade should be reduced by 50 points per year. This provision has existed for many years for allocation, but was not well known and so has been made clearer and extended to seeding for events. This ensures that a player who has essentially retired from the game for many years does not receive an out-of-place seeding when returning to the game until they have played sufficient games for their ranking grade to have begun to adjust to any change of form. The threshold for 'sufficient' ranking games has been retained at 10 games for AC and increased to 15 games for GC.
R6(d): In GC, a player may not appeal against a refereeing decision after that player has played a stroke. This is much shorter than the previous limitation and mirrors the WCF refereeing regulations update during 2019.
Safeguarding and Equality Policies. An explicit mention of compliance with these, and other CA Policies, has been added to Regulations C (clubs), O (officials) and P (players).

Many other changes have also been made for clarity or to remove typographic or formatting errors, but without any change of intent. This includes:

C1(b)(7): The tournament Levy is now specified in the regulations, to save clubs having to search for it. The amount of the Levy is unchanged.
C2(b): Clarification that Regulation C3 defines the detailed entry process for all events. Some unnecessary text which was the source of confusion has been removed.
C3(a)(2)(B): clarification that players from other WCF Member countries who are not resident in England are considered together with CA Premium members for tournament entry, in accordance with WCF Status 164.
C3(a)(3): clarification that allocation by ballot applies to all handicap events.
F1(a)(3): the practice of secondary seeding (treating groups of seeds equivalently) is now explicitly permitted.
M1(k): the phrase "safeguard the interests of players" has been changed to "protect the interests of players" to avoid any confusion with Safeguarding requirements.
M1(i): the regulation relating to presentation of trophies has been made consistent with the Tournament Director's responsibilities, and a reference to Regulation O included.
M2(c): modified to make it clear that the manager can impose, modify or remove time limits from games. The old clause permitting the manager to "Allow extra time for double-banked games, or in an emergency." has been removed, as this is already provided for under Regulation T2(c)(3).
P1(b): clarification that professionals are defined by the amount of "retained prize money", and that this phrase excludes expenses.
Uses of "Ranking" and "Grade" reviewed throughout for consistency, and to ensure that phrases such as "highest ranking" clearly relate to the grade of the player (i.e. the world ranked No. 1 player has the highest ranking grade).

If you want any advice about how these should be interpreted, or have suggestions for future improvements, please contact Samir Patel or the appropriate Tournament Committee.