The league is growing very fast.

When I first started, there was 15 races a week, over 15 or 16 weeks, and never a need to create divisions. The league now has 22 races a week, and 17 weeks. We had always been fine with those numbers.

Until this season, that is.

I don't think anyone could have predicted the sudden climb in numbers. Great to see and hope everyone stays. But, as always, the league develops with the game, and needs to change with the demand in numbers also.

Keep the suggestions coming guys. It's too late to make any drastic changes this season, but a few useful tweaks can be quickly put in place.

To answer you question JC about a second season this year, going by this thread, it looks un-likely and we'll have work to do for next season.

Thank you colm for answering me about the league 2 mate, I'll continue playing my home game that I get to train the horses god bless you colm for all the work you put in for us all.

Thanks you colm again for your hard work...

This is sad news indeed as i and i presume many others were using this season as a marker for there horses, so we're up to speed in the second season. This also looks like we'll only get one season out of SO4 which is a shame as its a really good game.

Doing the maths we're just coming into week 2 of a 17 week season, so theirs 16 weeks left, so we should finish round about the 16th of July presuming theirs no more hold ups.

So have a month off until the 16th August then start again which would finish around the 13th December.

I appreciate all the hard work put in by staff but would dearly love to see another season this year.

I agree with Jackdaw....Please lets have another season of S04....
Why not have a vote?

Sorry i hadn't read the full thread....I would like a second season but fully understand if it's not physically possible...

Colm...can you confirm maiden fields will be reduced to thirty and not split and i will remove some of my high rated horses..as they will be balloted out anyway....

It is possible to fit in the second season, without any doubt.

I seriously doubt this is the last season of SO4. I don't see SO5 appearing for a while. Mark's always given us a heads up when the next series of SO is underway, so we can put our development ideas on paper for him. He's not done that yet.

An interim fix for the current league maybe to add 3 more maidens on the weeks with 22 races. Some weeks have 25 races, this is to facilitate upload windows.

We certainly won't be able to fit in an extended season this year, so the extra maidens might help us partly resolve the huge numbers and placements for horses. Maybe adjust the schedule for the following season, by converting some of the low prestige listed, or low grade races (usually one's with low support) into maidens.

That will give us an opportunity to set 2011 and onwards up for a year of one extended season.

These are just proposals, we'll all need to put our heads together in the coming months and decide what is feasible and what's not.

That's right ESA.

If we do go ahead an add more maidens, we may not need to do this in future weeks, but if field sizes still fill up, then we'll go with the standard rule of maidens for unraced, or poorer horses. The stronger horses, should have enough listed and graded races to use.

Well colm there use to be a handicap been practiced in the olden days when I was in racing professionally, for example:- if you had a horse no matter what class it was and you wanted to nominate that horse in a race for say next week racing, you went to the racing body and you picked up the fields for that racing meeting, lets just say your horse was a maiden, well they would have lets say 2 or 3 maiden races in that race meeting, so you nominated your horse to run in all three races, then it was up to the racing authority to place your horse or horses in the race that they saw fit for your horse to race in, then the trainer two days later just picked up the fields for that race meeting to find out what race his or her horse is racing in or if the horse even had a run in the first place, having said that, maybe dave could do something to automate "TOM" to do this so all the trainer has to do is as follows,

Name of horse------Horse Gender------Horse Age------Horse's Handicap
....Sally Lou.......................Filly........................3..........................110....

and so on, then "TOM" takes over and comes out with the race that would fit the horse for that race meeting, then one day later "TOM" comes out with the race meeting fields all horses are placed in races and ready to go racing, I don't know if we are asking too much from dave to do this as coding would be involved but if dave is willing to do this, he would have 4 to 5 months this year after this league 1 is over, so 'TOM" would be ready for next years league, that way it would be easy to change rules in "TOM" as he would be a pre-set handicaper, also "TOM" can automatically add new races if it's needed for a certain week during the league racing season another words "TOM" would be growing and catering for as many trainers as needed for any league racing year be it 30 or 60 trainers, sorry this post went on and on, but it's hard for me to remember things from way back then these days.

adding some more maiden races sounds good. i dont want to make many suggestions really as it is my first year and I think you more experienced guys should make decisions which us newbies will trust. Its good that you have the newbies in mind when thinking about the future of the league, as i know how easy it is for people to forget about how it all begins when they become expert at it. Thats what im so happy about with this game and with the forum, all you guys seem more than willing to help out a fella like me.

can i just ask- if our horse gets scratched when evening out the fields do we get a chance to put them in a different race or will we have to wait til the next week with that particular horse?

Can i put forward a suggestion regarding handicaps etc...

As we have more trainers than ever which is good for the league, can we have graded handicaps as in real life....For example
I lost 3 runners this week due to high ratings....so may other trainers...
I could have run some in high grade handicaps say 85-100 rated instead..
I know we have low grade handicaps at the moment but high grade handicaps will help those trainers who lose out in oversubsribed maidens..
What does everyone think?

sounds perfectly reasonable

what problems to race divisions cause btw?

Would be gutted if no 2nd season l have held horses back for that and run them as 2yo knowing ther better at 3

i really would appreciate it if i could be allowed to delete my unraced 2yo so i could replace her with the 3yo version. dont see what harm this would cause - what u reckon colm?could you do that for me in the next window?