From September, Try Tag Rugby London leagues are moving to four seasons annually. The approximate dates of the seasons will be as follows;
Spring – January to April
Early Summer – Late April to June
Summer – July & August
Autumn – September to December.
The Autumn and Spring seasons will subsequently be longer than previous years, running for up to 15 weeks at some venues.
Why are we moving to longer seasons?
Moving to longer seasons has the following benefits for players;
- Less change of season admin for team organisers
- A longer Christmas break, removing the need to play games in the runup to Christmas when a lot of teams struggle to field a side.
- The return of popular Tagmas events. These one-off tournaments will feature at a selection of league venues in mid to late December.
- Some leagues run with byes, allowing more teams to participate year round and provide greater access to our most popular venues.
- This will allow some leagues to run with an extra division, so more teams & players can play at their correct level
Hence when comparing leagues for cost the main cost you should be looking at is the cost per game or league match.
With Seasons running longer, how will this affect the price?
Try Tag Rugby leagues are priced on a cost per league match basis. This is shown on the team registration button on our website.
Not all regions are moving to longer seasons initially (this announcement is related to London only), and hence our website will still display a total price if all games go ahead. For many leagues, this total price will be reduced once we confirm if the league will have byes, and hence the total number of games per team in the season. For example;
League A has capacity for 8 teams playing weekly, playing over 15 weeks. Cost per game is £70, and there are 15 possible games. The headline team fee would be £1050 for the season. However, we accept 10 teams into the league, meaning all teams get 3 byes throughout the season. This means the cost of the season will be reduced to 12 x £70 = £840.
When will fees be due?
The payment schedule will be as follows;
- Deposit payment of £100 to confirm your place in the league.
- Second installment of 10 games worth of fees due by kick-off in round 2*.
- Payment of the remaining balance due around week 9. For autumn 2023, this payment is due by 2nd November.
*Note leagues advertised as having 10 or 11 games will have the full balance due in round 2.
Do we have to have byes?
Unfortunately there aren’t sufficient available floodlit pitches in London to satisfy the demand for year round Tag Rugby. This has meant that in recent years many summer teams wanting to continue can’t secure a place in an Autumn League. By adding byes to a select number of Autumn Leagues we will be able to offer places to slightly more teams than previous years, meaning a greater number of teams are able to continue participating year round.
Has the price increased?
The cost of all weather pitches in London has been increasing dramatically in recent years, well above the rate of inflation. We have seen our hire costs at some venues increase by up to 20% annually. There are a number of reasons for this;
- Councils & schools facing drastic budget cuts, and hence seeing their sports venue as a vital source of revenue.
- Increased electricity costs for use of floodlights
- The shortage of pitches, meaning there is a lack of supply in the market.
- Venues can make more money breaking pitches up into quarters or thirds to cater for 5-a-side football, pricing out sports like ours that require width.
In London we increase the price of our all weather pitch leagues annually each autumn. Given the cost of living pressures, we have done our best to keep the price per game as low as possible this autumn. The average increase this year is 6.5%, which is below the inflation rate for the past 16 months. This equates to only 42p per game per player.