Which shows the farcical nature of their decision.
Also looking at our draw of the 13 'randomly' fixtures 5 of them are against Masters 1 teams...
I also see the 2nd bottom team from last years Masters 3 is due to play the winners of Masters 1 - should be a close game ;)
What will be really farcical will be when we split into the 4 divisions at the end. Now i'm making assumptions on what Mainland are thinking here (dangerous i know) but my assumption is we're going thru this "grading" year so we can get back to what we're supposed to have next year, 3 divisions of 8 teams. I'm picking my team after the grading rounds will be in the 2nd division. What we're likely to see in that will be no team wanting to win for fear the top two teams will be combined with the top division to make up next years Div 1.
Based on what i've seen from Mainland over the past few weeks in organising the Masters season however it wouldn't surprise me if they haven't even given the format for next season any consideration in this whole mess. Would be nice if they came out and confirmed what the plan is for next season otherwise we're just going to end up in the exact same mess in twelve months time
The whole thing is weird. They went out to the clubs asked for their opinion on two options 1) Stay with with the status quo ie 5 in Masters 1, 8 in Masters 2 and 11 in Masters 3 or 2) move to two leagues of 12 and they would go with what the majority says.
They then said all the clubs responded and the breakdown was six in favour of option 2), nine in favour of option 1) and two clubs were happy to go with the general consensus. They stated the season would remain as was.
Then a week later they change it all again and have a farcical 23 team league.
You either make the rules as a governing body OR ask for opinion and go with the majority, not do one and then change your mind.