DiamondsRock

2014 Admission Prices (http://www.newcastlediamonds.co/clubinfo.asp) Stadium - Adult £16 - Concession £12 - Child £3 Online - Adult £15 - Concession £11 - Child £3

How can you classify Golf as a sport and not Snooker? It takes a hell of a lot more skill to control a cue ball than it does to belt a golf ball across a field. Dominoes agreed with though.

Hmm... does this mean that the EL teams are now 5 riders, and each meeting the punters will be forced to watch NL "filler heats"? Hope the price will be dropped to reflect this

Hilarious. What exactly is "elite" about a 32 point limit, and NL riders at reserve?

If Cook prefers to remain the big fish in a small pond then that's his problem. He'll never be a GP rider until he rides full time in a top division though.

Not true, I'm arguing from the point of improving the product on display and sorting the costs out. If you reduce the amount of riders that each team requires, you end up creating a surplus - so you can start to be more demanding in terms of what you're willing to pay each rider in your side. It reduces the ability of a rider to hold a club to ransom on wages if their average fits what a side needs, and if they don't want to ride for what's on offer - tough! Reducing the team sizes can also reduce the need for guests and r/r, something which I believe you have commented on in the past. If you reduce team sizes to be based on the amount of available riders, then you don't need doubling up - so we remove the problem of when one rider chooses to ride for one club over the other. I'd also do away with this pointless "league and half" that the EL currently runs. If the losses are as big as what the clubs are claiming, then I don't see why they go to the expense of running an extra "half league" campaign. Just do one, over the summer months, and that's it done with. Ditch the pointless matches in the PL - league cup is often cited as this. So, I've now reduced the need for guests, and done away with the pointless fixtures - there's the cost cutting done, and reduced the team sizes to give the promoters more bargaining power at the contract table. For your NL suggestion, don't kid yourself that it's booming with talent that can be easily scooped up for the club reserves. In fact, having a quick skim through the NL team declarations, I see that a good number of them already ride in the PL, and a good number have previously failed at this level. About 15 of them, I don't recall seeing in the PL before. Hardly enough for one big league. Then there's the problem with the product already - do you want to reduce the quality further by introducing these riders? Put simply, I don't think that there's enough of them in there to replace the amount of riders that would be lost through wage cuts alone - so you'd then end up with doubling up from the NL to the "One big league"... which is one of the thing's we're trying to avoid. Thinking that reducing squad size would be the best option - can't see simply saying "we'll replace you with a NL rider" having much benefit at all - either in terms of reducing the amount of riders that we have to pay for from abroad, or for improving the product quality in general. It also makes the product see "fresher" and may entice some fans back to see what it's like.

Er... we do not have to watch anything of the sort! Personally, I think that merging leagues is bad idea. Woffinden vs a NL Wobbler is not exactly entertaining for the crowd. If they're going to merge the EL and PL, then I'd rather reduce the riders per team to 5/6. Should sort out the lack of available riders, and maybe reduce the amount of guests and r/r.

How can merging both league be the solution, when there's not enough riders to go around when the leagues are separate? If you merge both leagues, you remove doubling up - so where are the extra riders going to come from, to populate this "one big league"?

Then it's about time that club's got realistic with wages, and actually started to put some effort into promote. Hopefully with the loss of the Sky handouts, certain clubs will start to think about how much they can afford to pay out, and try harder to bring new fans in. Should Sky return, then hopefully the promoters will use it to subsidise Sky match admission costs (rather than paying out unaffordable wages) - make the product look popular, and maybe it will entice more people along to regular meetings. A rolling one year contract (or no contract at all) may give them the kick up the backside they need.

The GP's are a much better way of deciding a champion, rather than having a one off final, where any rider can fluke the title on a wet night...

I agree!

Uh-huh.

I agree. It's significantly stronger than the teams that Belle Vue usually track.

They should push him to the moon. But sadly, can't see it happening.

What the hell do I know! Whoop! Well done Tai!

Hmm.. I don't like his chances in Ht 5.

Satisfactory

Diddums. Quite an achievement considering that it's been fenced off all season.

Haha! Never thought I'd say this, but I genuinely hope that Redcar go on to win the Playoffs. How funny would it be for a mid-table team to win the title (especially when Leicester could have taken their place)! Really hope it happens. Looks like I'm gracing the Snooker hall with my presence (and wallet!) for a few more Sundays.

Oh, I thought the whole point of these Playoffs were to give club's meaningful matches at the end of the season. Looks like that idea's gone up the creek without a paddle!

For a few matches at the end of the year, how many stick around for a full season?

Knockout Cup? Has a bit of history attached, so would be a better prize than a new playoff trophy?

Certainly one of the reasons why I have attended a grand total of 0 matches all season. All them 06/07/08/09/10, most them 2011, but only about 10 last season. How the end of last season was run sickened me right off. Playoffs, fine - but the lack of holding the Edin v Worky match meant that the team who won the title may not have even made the final anyway. Now that the playoff's have started though and the league title is up for grabs, I might attend, but in all honesty it's taken that long to get to the meaningful fixtures (I never attended challenge matches which is all league fixtures now are), I'd rather go and have a few frames of Snooker instead. The thing that I've noticed is everyone supports Playoffs providing that you finish 2nd-6th (so your team still has a chance of winning the title, even though your team failed to win it over the season against everyone else), or 1st (providing that your team wins them). And then whoever wins are deemed "worthy league champions". Worthy as they performed best over 4 extra league matches and a knockout final? Yeah, right!

The fact that Workington could easily have qualified for the final but were denied thanks to the weather suggests to me that the season DID end in a farce. Rulebook has a cutoff for the NL playoffs as 15th September. Guessing the PL uses the same.