I wouldn't say it was abused intentionally, but there were some occasions in the last 3-4 seasons while we had no rule for one of each gender that some teams did have an all male lineup. I personally never viewed it as an issue, the reason we changed to no requirement for those seasons was because we have been losing teams at an alarming rate. We lost around 2 teams per season for 5 seasons from a peak of 22 down to 12 last season. We have 12 again this season, but only because our secretary fought hard to get new bowlers to sign up for the league, otherwise we would have been down to 9 or 10.

There are certain circumstances that I don't want to talk about relating to the vote to change back to the current requirement. I will say that it occurred during a very heated league meeting at the end of last season with team composition as one of the issues. I don't see any possibility of a cap either, when we discussed going from a 5 to 4 person per team league entire existing teams that didn't want to break up threatened to quit the league all together.

I'm happy that none of this affects my team and that I'm not my team captain. It will be an entertaining meeting, I'd like to bring some popcorn and be a spectator.

Mark