PLAYER REGISTRATION

GMCL will have a new player registration system in place for the 2020 season which will go live in March 2020.  This will be operated via a link from the GMCL website.

This Update (Feb 2020) follows on from the original briefing note and gives additional detail where held and responds to all the comments and questions we have received where we are able.

This briefing note is to give you all advance notice of this arrangement and provide you with details of the work we have been doing over the last few months to hopefully answer your questions.

Our League costs over £40,000 to administer every year and to fund this we rely heavily upon the generous support of sponsors such as Marston's, Carlsberg Tetley, Tiflex and others. As you know, there are no league fees and we have used money raised to date to set up and fund the cricHQ system and give away access to the cricHQ ‘app’ in past seasons.  

UPDATE Feb 2020:

The new registration system is not an easy route for us to end fundraising through sponsorship, in fact we are continually chasing leads and contacts to help us develop and grow and, more importantly, allow us to support our clubs’ development and we want to be able to use our funds raised to provide direct help when we can. Carlsberg Tetley’s are sponsoring us again in 2020 as are Marston’s and only recently our team have added Malbern Windows as our main sponsor of the website, so if you need a quote please contact them by clicking on the web page image and say you are with GMCL; as always with Malbern you will get a great deal and the league benefits too!

We won’t be charging league fees and we are continually trying to drive down fines by improving processes to make it easier to comply with the rules that make our league fair and equitable for all clubs and all players; our aim remains that clubs use their hard-earned resources to benefit their club and their members. We are not looking to create a bank account full of clubs’ money to which clubs have no access.

Our new 4 year licence agreement and main League Sponsorship with CricHQ and MAR (My Action Replay) is now vital in giving us the advanced technology used to power our website, Twitter and the cricHQ app with live scores, results, video and information and we are taking the opportunity to build the system for our future by extending the agreement to include administration functions, initially player registration in 2020 onwards.

UPDATE Feb 2020:

We are not in debt, we run with the aim of not generating profits or building assets unnecessarily so the registration fees paid by the senior players to cricHQ will be used not only to cover our cricHQ fees but also to cover the supply of the premium cricHQ app for all senior and junior players as well as match officials and our scorers.

Because of the numbers involved we have been able to negotiate the fee down significantly from the current individual off the shelf rate of £30 per person for the premium app giving the same highest level of access to every player at every club irrespective of standard, division or competition.

To further ensure maximum benefit for players we have also negotiated, again using the scale of the league to provide the best price, personal accident cover with the excellent Extra Cover Insurance for every player irrespective of age in every GMCL game in every division or cup competition. This provides benefits for the player should they be injured travelling to or from the game or during the game. Many clubs have insurance, but most do not have personal accident cover.  We believe the provision of this benefit for every player meets the stated aims of the league using the size of the league to generate great value services for our players.

Why are we doing this?

We want to make the excellent match records and statistics service on cricHQ even better by eliminating scorecard errors so that our scorers generate stats that are as accurate as possible at the close of the game for the benefit of all our players and officials.  We need to change what is happening now so that club and league administrators don’t have to spend hours each week correcting errors. To achieve this, we need to tighten up how players are registered and recorded with our clubs. 

UPDATE Feb 2020:

With a clear registration

• all scorers will have all players available to add to teams ready for scoring,
• all players stats will be correctly grouped against their name and not lead to players with multiple records as happens
• club and league volunteers will not spend hours each week trying to correct errors

Also we must act, following concerns raised by many clubs and players, to eliminate the growing use of ineligible and, most particularly, unregistered players by the introduction of a photo ID system within the registration and scorecard system allowing player photos to be brought up on device screens as soon as the team has been entered on to the scoring app.  Photo ID as a printed card has been a successful deterrent in several leagues, we believe the electronic version of this that we are designing with cricHQ will match or better that success and prevent players playing under other’s names.

UPDATE Feb 2020:

With a clear online registration

• the improved player stats will provide transparency for captains, opponents and the league on which players are available to play in games where there are player restrictions.
• The improved player stats will provide transparency for club and league awards at any time without several weeks work checking figures and merging player records.
• We will no longer have post-match complaints of unregistered players when everyone has gone home, and neither the league nor the clubs are able to prove anything.  A visual check on matchday will ensure that the players named on the team sheet are the players playing in the game. Heavily penalties will be enforced for any false registrations or for any club, captain or player taking actions with the intention of deceiving the system.
• We do not have to wait until a plastic ID card is available for players to take part in a game.
• We do not have to have a separate registration procedure for late additions to the team, already registered players can be easily added, players new to the club in the season who are not transferring can be registered at the club online up to an hour before the game and before the scorer uploads the fixture ready for scoring. The app and the personal accident insurance are also available to the player immediately after completing the registration.

We also hope to finalise the integrated captains report and umpires report systems and make this available to all our users. The system generates direct contact from the league to relevant persons to ensure reports are not forgotten, to reduce unnecessary fines for our clubs.

UPDATE Feb 2020:

Some of the additional benefits of registration we are looking to in the future will

• give captains and club officials direct contact with all players in a squad. 
• Give improved team of the week stats
• Mean annual forms require less repeated input
• Ensure banned players cannot be selected

Some larger leagues around the country bring in thousands, some up to £10,000 in fines per annum. We want our fine income to be nil and we will continue to find ways for our clubs to more easily comply with our rules and requirements.

 So, summarising, in the first instance the amendments should -

• reduce the occasions where scorers cannot access the correct player for the team.
• improve the match commentary function and shot description with more accurate feed.
• better align player details to the MyActionReplay (MAR) video and
• provide a player ID capability so that umpires and opponents have certainty over the players taking part in any game.
• reduce fines for clubs for missing reports
• allow us to pre-populate umpire appointments on to fixtures
• give us and all clubs full use of the team and club communication system inbuilt into cricHQ
• support our reporting requirements on player statistics and participation of around 3500 senior and junior players to feed reports to the ECB and LCF to improve the game for all who participate.
• support GMCL administration by informing us of player numbers and levels of activity and changes year on year. This will allow us to better respond to concerns or highlight successes.

cricHQ and My Action Replay are leading the way around the world with their cricket scoring and linked video technology and we at GMCL are driving and developing our partnership with them to deliver the best one stop system for players, scorers, club officials and coaches as well as our panel and club umpires.

Who does this apply to?

Before the start of the 2020 season

• every player including juniors and
• all panel & club umpires

must register on to the system, and

• non-playing league & club officials,
• non-playing club managers and coaches,
• non-playing club volunteers

should register on to the cricHQ system.  

Please note that registration is mandatory for all players of all ages; without a registration a player cannot play.

The details requested for all groups listed above will be Name, Date of Birth, Gender, Player Type (England Qualified/ Overseas etc) or role (scorer etc), Player Ethnicity, E-Mail address and a passport style photograph.

We have the guarantee and certainty of compliance with GDPR by cricHQ which will mean that this data will not be removed from cricHQ for any other use.

UPDATE Feb 2020:

Whilst we are satisfied that in restricting the data available visible in cricHQ to the display of only a name and player photo it should significantly reduce any fears around disclosure of young players information we do understand that we must do everything in our power to reduce concerns to an absolute minimum without losing sight of the reasoning for the upload of a photo.

Therefore, we will not seek mandatory upload of a passport style photo for any junior player who will not be playing senior cricket,

So, this amendment means the following do not have to upload a photo

• all juniors at under 12 and younger, who are not allowed to play in senior cricket

• Junior players who do not take part in any 1^st XI, 2^nd XI, 3^rd XI, 4^th XI league and cup fixtures.

Passport style photo upload is still required from

• Juniors who will take part in any senior games

All Juniors still have to register on the cricHQ system and from the point of registration they will have access to the premium cricHQ app on the e-mail used and be covered by the Extra Cover Personal Accident Insurance.

Thank you to the few representations that were made to the Board, we recognised we could do more and have reacted accordingly.

What does this cost?

Anyone 18 or over on 1 September 2019 wishing to play in any GMCL competition must pay £10 at the time of registration.

There is no fee for the following: -

• players who were Under 18 on 31 August 2019
• any of the following who do not play in any GMCL competition
  • Registered Scorers
  • Registered Team Managers and Club Coaches
  • Registered Umpires (League Panel or Club)
  • Registered Club Officials and Volunteers

UPDATE Feb 2020:

It  has been suggested that this payment is unfair on occasional players or fill in players with last minute call ups but unfortunately our experience shows it is often the last minute players and fill ins where the issue of unregistered players or players playing under false names arises as clubs look to plug gaps and for ease will often turn to a player with experience rather than one without.

The benefits kick in at registration for the season ahead and the app can be used to follow the team however many games are played; of course an alternative for avoiding the fee is registering a junior which incurs no cost, something we want to encourage at all clubs.

We also believe that this will encourage better management of playing squads, to avoid last minute registrations and player shortages.

We will not be making any changes at this time for senior players however we have agreed we will

• look at the stats at the season end to determine any negative impact and
• consider how we can respond to this going forward, perhaps looking at patterns of play of occasional players and
• look into the possibility of refunds

What is given in return?

The club and league administration benefits are very good but there are other benefits to those registering.

Everyone registering will receive: -

• Free access to the Premium ‘All Access’ cricHQ App (worth £30 per year).
  • This gives access to all live ball by ball scorecards and videos on match days and all year round.
  • This will be done by a simple mail to your registered e-mail to claim you profile with no further forms to complete

All registered players (of all ages) competing in any senior or junior GMCL organised match will receive:

• Free Personal Accident Insurance Cover from the date of registration through “Extra Cover”, brokered by Marshall Wooldridge. 
  • The cover provides benefits to players for accidental bodily injury whilst engaging in official activities, including:
    • Competitive cricket matches organised by the insuring body (GMCL)
      • Including pre-match activity for GMCL Organised matches
    • Practice matches or official practice or coaching session organised or attended by the insuring body (GMCL)
    • Duties on behalf of the insuring body (GMCL)
    • Direct travel to/from any of the above activities.

The league already pays insurance for our umpires and those taking part in GMCL representative games.

If you already subscribe to the app and pay monthly but qualify for free “all access” in accordance with the above, please log in to your account and cancel the subscription before March.

Please check your club policy for Personal Accident Cover.

What happens next?

We will be writing to each club's secretary to explain the system and procedure in full in due course, when all details are known.

The system will be ready for inputting on 1 March 2020 giving 6 weeks for all players to register prior to the new season.

UPDATE Feb 2020:

Concern has been expressed that clubs do not see or communicate with many players until nearer the season and so they will not get the message to players to register early.

The beauty of the online system is that there is no cut-off date, players can register in the week leading up to their first game, The only deadline is that they must be registered before they can play.

Some clubs have said that they are having a registration night, some will do it at winter nets and some have said they are in regular contact with their players so should have no problem sharing the details as soon as we share the full rules. We leave this to you.

We believe this is another major step forward in the efficient, forward thinking administration of our league enabling us all to make best use of the full benefits of the cricHQ system and allowing us to support you as clubs and players to make the game more interesting, fairer, safer and more enjoyable for more and more to play this great game.