Cricket: Proposal to add eight clubs to league

Oct 11 2007 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

THE Business Assistance Liverpool Competition looks set for another shake-up in a year’s time.

The plan is for eight new clubs to be added to the league and three divisions, each of them comprising 12 teams, to be established from the 2009 season onwards.

The move has been prompted by the wide disparity in the quality of cricket played in the Competition this summer with some clubs also feeling that the 14-team ECB Premier League was too big.

The idea of both enlarging and further dividing the number of clubs in the Competition was floated at the league end-of-season meeting at Sefton Park on Tuesday evening and in the view of league chairman, Ted Williams, the suggestions “didn’t come as any great surprise and were met with general acceptance”.

He said: “It was a very cordial and productive meeting.

“There was general support for three 12s and the question now is how we get there.”

One favoured method to achieve the desired outcome is for three teams to be relegated from the Premier League next September but only one promoted from a First Division, which may also see its bottom four sides join the eight new clubs in the lowest tier. However, any proposals must be approved by the league AGM in January.

The Merseyside and Southport Alliance seems likely to disappear as a result of the proposed changes although some promotion from the Merseyside Competition and/or the Southport and District League will probably continue.

“The feeling was that we should not become a closed league,” said Williams, who added that opening up the Competition to clubs from outside the current MSCA has not been ruled out.

“Of paramount importance for clubs coming into the Liverpool Competition will be ground criteria,” said Williams, who also made it clear that all those aspiring to join the league will need to have received the ECB’s Clubmark accreditation award by the end of 2008, a requirement which will also apply to current members.