End of Season Respect Tables

Spartan South Midland Respect Sub – Committee
Final Report for Season 2014/ 2015 By Bob Flight

My thanks to all clubs for supporting the League Respect Programme this season.
I feel that overall it has benefited both the League and Clubs in making football in the Spartan South Midlands Football League more enjoyable for players, officials and spectators alike.

The number of games played this season were 14% more than last season and I have adjusted the various figures for comparison accordingly. I am pleased to announce that the C2 (Dissent) cautions were down by 4.7% on last season, although still too high at 692. Sending off offences were unfortunately up by 1.1%. This is due mainly to the increase in the S7 (Second caution) offences. It is pleasing to see that the bench offences were 7% down on those of last season which in part was due to the new bench policy initiative launched at the beginning of the season by the League. The average Respect penalty points per game fell slightly from 1.65 last season to 1.63 this season. All in all a successful season for the League Respect programme which has continued to show gradual improvements year on year.

2013/14 Section Team % 2014/15 Section Team % Movement
%
Green 58.54 Green 55.30 - 5. 6
Brown 28.05 Brown 24.70 - 11.9
Red 13.41 Red 20.00 + 49.0
Total 100 Total 100

The disappointing fact of the figures above are that there has been a drop of over 5% of teams in the good green Respect section of the tables. The brown, need to improve, section has decreased due to teams falling into red section. Disappointingly, there has been a huge increase of teams that have fallen into the unacceptable red section. This may however be due to the improving level of the average penalty marks which would push lesser performing teams much further down the Respect tables. Disappointing as the increase in the number of teams in the red section is, those teams in this section have, on average, 1.20% less Respect penalty points than those of last season. Thus whilst the number of teams has risen, the level of offending has reduced.

Respect – The Next Steps

Following on from the ideas discussed in Committee and at the three mid season meetings held for clubs, I recommend that the following be implemented for next season.

1. To continue with the Bench exclusion policy which has borne significant
improvements of bench behaviour.

2. Clubs deemed by the League to have an unacceptable Respect
record during the season, and who cannot or will not improve their
Respect performance, to be excluded from the League constitution
for the following season. No club is in this category this season

3. To continue with a Respect reward budget to be paid to those
teams that have an exceptional or improved Respect record throughout
the season.

The winners of the Respect awards were announced at the AGM were presented with their cheques.

I will be reminding those worse performing clubs/teams of this season, of the urgent need to dramatically improve their Respect performances for next season.

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