five adult games would be cancelled and listed as ties. The decision was based on our current weather safety decision protocol. The final statement by the decision making parties was this: “This situation is no different than a game being called for weather safety, in that gameplay could not continue due to the pitch being too dangerous for play.” For those that have not seen this rule in action in the past, we thought it important to explain why all matches were cancelled and how that affects the playoff picture.
Club policy says that if any one game is cut short before halftime, or cancelled all together, on a Sunday due to weather (i.e. visible lightening,) then all games for that day are cancelled as well. This is because we do not have any make-up opportunities for our matches. Therefore, teams that had a match cancelled would play one less game than the remaining teams. This would affect the playoff rankings, and is the reason for the club policy. Back when there were just eight teams, every team played on Sunday and this was an easy way of dealing with the repercussions of the cancellation. Now that there are ten teams, there are inevitably teams who would not be affected by a Sunday cancellation. Because of this we look at winning percentage when deciding playoff seeding instead of the straight number of wins and losses.
Winning percentage will be the first factor when deciding who makes the playoffs. If there are still ties in the standings after calculating the winning percentage, the tie-breakers are determined by scoring. The first scoring tie-breakers would look at total points scored against each team. After that, consideration is given to total points scored by your team divided by the total points allowed against your team. The 2015 season saw a record number of ties in the standings and as such, saw many levels of tie-breakers to come out with the final playoff scenario. At this point in the season, this all seems confusing and irrelevant but we wanted to clarify things right away. Since the day ended in all tied matches, there will not be a Leaderboard in this issue but look to next week's Dish to see where your team stands this early in the season.