Following the First Minister’s statement to Parliament last week (3rd August 2021), Scottish Volleyball will be organising the National Leagues and Scottish Cups this season 2021/22. Registration is open now and until Wednesday 18th August 2021. The calendar and fixtures will be released a week later. The staff at SV appreciate that this is an extremely tight turnaround for which we can only apologise. I hope you will appreciate, that as an organisation, we were in the position of awaiting the First Minister’s announcement yesterday before moving forward. This “tight turnaround” also aims to provide clubs with as much time as possible to book halls for early fixtures.
Scottish Volleyball will produce a double gender traditional league format, with a full home and away season, beginning the first weekend in October. SVL Premier will be made up of 8 teams with remaining teams in SVL One and SVL Two.
The Junior Scottish Volleyball Leagues will also return this season with information regarding these leagues currently unavailable. Full details will be sent to clubs and schools at the end of the month.
The Scottish Cup, for this season only, will have changes to the pool phase format, to support clubs in a variety of ways. For the First Round, all teams will be entered into the Cup, seeded, and then drawn into groups of four. The pool phase will then use modified pool play with the top seed playing the bottom seed, and the two middle seeds playing. The winners of each match will then play with the winners gaining a top seeding going into the next round with the losers also progressing before the two teams who lost the initial matches play to avoid elimination. Each group will play at the home venue of Seed 1 with all four matches taking place over one day.
Scottish Volleyball has worked diligently to explore different options for our Scottish Cup to provide support for clubs whilst maintaining our premier competition in this uncertain period. The modified pool play enables round one to take place over one day at a single venue, rather than three weekends in multiple venues. This reduces hall let costs and the numbers of halls required. If the designated home team are unable to host, another of the three teams may host instead. The move to a single day will free up weekends on the Scottish Volleyball calendar to allow for fixture rescheduling and potential postponements.
Finally, there will be some temporarily relaxation of specified standards to support the delivery of our leagues and cups. The requirements for match venues will be ‘relaxed’ to allow clubs a wider range of halls to hire and use. Clubs wishing to use a venue which is not on the approved list and/or does not meet the standards of hall expected, must inform Competitions Secretary who will check the facility before granting approval. Flexibility will also be granted around arrangement of fixtures to bring matches forward or grant postponements. An appendix to the rules regarding all of this will be created, added to the rules, and circulated to clarify the allowed flexibility.
All of this will be overseen by a competitions panel, which has a blueprint taken from the successful format created for this year’s beach season. This competitions panel will be asked to rule on disputes and deal with appeals. An appropriate appendix or addition will be made to the rules.
Clubs are reminded that everything will be underpinned within the caveat of this current Covid-19 pandemic and potential restrictions being implemented. The competition panel may be asked to make quick decisions to react to a changing situation. The SV staff will be on hand to support clubs with this new flexibility.
It is great to be offering such a comprehensive schedule of indoor competition. SV thank you for all your support through these difficult times, for the future support in registering your club and members. We all look forward to seeing play in our competitions very soon.