THE Aire-Wharfe Cricket League could revert back to first teams playing first teams and second teams playing second teams next season.

The proposal discussed at the senior league’s council meeting on Tuesday at Otley Rugby Union Football Club.

The new system, where second teams can be promoted into Division Three to face first teams, has only been in place for a season, but Rawdon proposed that first teams only play in divisions One to Three.

Harden seconded the proposal, which will therefore go forward to the league’s annual meeting on Tuesday, November 26, again at Otley RUFC.

However, several clubs spoke out against the proposal, figuring that it needed four or five seasons to properly bed in and that second teams had enjoyed the challenge of facing first teams.

For example, North Leeds Seconds and Tong Park Esholt Seconds had finished seventh and eighth in Division Three in the season just finished, each winning seven matches despite 10 of the 12 teams in the section being first XIs.

Meanwhile, Craven League heavyweights Crossflatts have failed to get into the Aire-Wharfe League for the 2020 season.

The Division One champions and Wynn Cup winners only gained nine votes, while Shadwell, who collected 24 votes, and Old Leodiensians, who got 27, were thus re-elected, having finished as the only two first teams in Aire-Wharfe Division Four.

One of the themes of the evening, reiterated several times by league secretary Matthew Grimes, was that the Aire-Wharfe League is a senior league, and North Leeds emphasised the point by proposing that the management committee set out a wide-ranging charter of minimum standards that clubs must abide by.

With the fine details still to be revealed, Otley seconded the resolution, which was passed 27-0, giving the management committee plenty of work in implementing it over the winter.