If you’re  a regular on the league website, you’ll be aware that the British American Football League (BAFL) has withdrawn from the National Governing Body – the British American Football Association (BAFA) – citing the consistent poor delivery of business critical services as its primary reason.

According to statements the 2010 season will continue under the BAFL banner, but it will be as an independent members association. The true impact of this withdrawal remains to be seen, but with the season fast approaching hopefully it will not have any negative repercussions.

Due to these events, a new organisation has been born – the British Amercian Football Players Association.

In an open letter to the British American Football community they cited their reasons as:

‘The BAFPA has been borne out of a feeling of necessity, that all players should have the ability to have their voice heard in the same way that is afforded to coaches (BAFCA), referees (BAFRA), and the member leagues (BUAFL and BAFL) in British American Football.’

The main principles of BAFPA are:

• The BAFPA’s purpose is to represent the views, wishes and desires of the people who participate in the sport as players.
• The BAFPA is independent and represents only the views of the players without prejudice.
• The BAFPA will ensure complete transparency in all communications to all our members.
• The BAFPA shall work within the confines of the NGB but is impartial in all matters.
• The BAFPA members will democratically vote for their board

You can find out more on the new BAFPA website and Facebook group.

Welcome to the new site of the Chichester Sharks.

With a new season and league upon us, I thought it a good time to give the site an overhaul. We’d been running the other site for a good few years and it had reached a point when there were too many technical limitations that were stopping me doing what I wanted to do to improve the site.

Anyway, I hope you like the new look – its not quite finished but its getting there. Have a little look around there are some new features that you might like:

• Check out the forum – you can sign up and chat in here about anything football related – be it Sharks, BAFL, NFL, Arena football, College football – and pretty much anything else
• Take a look at our all time history – every competitive game the Sharks have ever played is logged here. Happy to say that we’ve won more games than any of English team since we’ve been playing
• Take a look at your profile on the Roster page – if you’re not on there, send me your details and I’ll get it uploaded
• Check out our Film room, with footage from a selection of our games

There is plenty more, so have a dig around. If you can think of anything else you’d like to see on here, let me know. I’ll be adding things as the season goes on – like the fixtures, results and match reports.

As ever, leave a comment below, at least to show me you’re out there!

cheers