UPDATE: League One Competition

Some of you may have heard a bit (or a lot) about the situation around the LOTTO NRFL Northern Conference and NRF League One competitions around promotion / relegation and subsequent appeals process.

The following is the latest update from NRF which has resulted in a restart of the season.

Kia ora

First of all, we want to thank all LOTTO NRFL Northern Conference and NRF League One clubs for their patience and feedback over the last week while we worked through the different options for this season.

Quality competitions is what we strive to deliver, and ultimately, we’ve based our decision on this principle. Following the Sports Tribunal’s ruling to promote Central United after their appeals process, both competitions will be restarted in their new formats.

As football people, restarting a season that’s underway is a huge call and one we’ve by no means taken lightly. After listening to your feedback and working through several possible scenarios, this is ultimately the fairest and most equitable outcome, and the short term disruption will allow all clubs to complete the season on a level playing field.

The NRF team regrets the impact this has on your campaigns, and we appreciate all the clubs who’ve fought hard to win points so far, travelled to play and are having their season reset.

The reasoning behind the decision to reset includes the following:

• Accommodating Central United’s promotion is a substantial change to both competitions, and this will make it fair for everyone
• The Northern Conference and League One are now new competitions, with a different composition of teams, number of rounds/games, and format
• It’s our job to safeguard our competitions’ integrity – if we don’t reset, teams playing catch up matches would have an unfair advantage from knowing previous results
• Northern Conference teams that have lost points previously would have had five extra games to try and move away from the bottom two places. With a minimum of two and likely three teams to be relegated, and a drop of five less games to be played this unfairly disadvantages those teams
• Simply removing Central United’s results from League One means the balance of the competition will be skewed from this point on. We believe a reset gives every team an even run at the rest of the season
• Teams could go multiple weeks with no games, considering Chatham Cup games, byes or points from the carryover, further reducing the number of matches per team.
• It’s our goal that teams play as much football as possible over the remainder of the season window 

The new draw will be available on the NRF website soon but we will be playing SAR next Saturday 29th April at Home, 3pm KO.