Congratulations to Roger for organising an excellent site everybody booked in like clockwork and we had brilliant sunshine, but yet again I am confronted by good ploughmen feeling the compulsion to pick and massage their crowns they failed to put together. From this point onwards it is impossible to have a fair match. This is not a grey area, the SOP is crystal clear in the rules that nothing should be touched after the plough has passed and any compliant ploughmen have wasted their time and money attending. This cheating is rife in some areas of the country, and a cancer that needs eradicating and a road that the FFA ploughing must not go down. This is stopping ploughmen travelling to compete more than the expense of fuel, or do they want to be one of one.
I have two young men I’m coaching this winter as a national champion did for me. But how can I tell them that in high profile matches the rule book seems to go out of the window. The SOP line on this is it’s down to the stewards, but it is not, these are grown men at the top of their game, and surely it’s just self discipline. To not adhere to simple rules is sticking two fingers up to the organiser and the art of ploughing. We had a minor problem with this at a match in Ridgemont, Bedfordshire so a red and yellow flag system was adopted. A small yellow flag at the end of your plot meant you were being warned, and a red flag was a twenty point deduction. Naming and shaming them worked in one foul swoop. After one yellow flag was issued, the problem was solved.