The meeting started late. Everything in softball starts late, no one ever cares, and no one ever will. In fact, if you do care, you are being unreasonable.

The league’s accounts are known only until 31 August (it is now 22 October). Apparently it is impossible for the league to access their bank account details with seven weeks advance notice. Again, this seems perfectly fine to everyone; anyone questioning this, is being unreasonable.

One team in particular whose approach to softball has always been, and continues to be, to merely tolerate women, seems to be finding it impossible to retain new women players, and they have no idea why. Suggesting introspection turns out to be something so novel to them, they had never considered it.

The same person on this same team has confused the term “starting player” with the term “substitute player”. Only one other person in the room (besides me and my colleague) seems to understand this, and everyone else is either too stupid to understand, or doesn’t care. This is in relation to the never-ending desire to have more men in their starting lineup at the expense of women, at every turn (the same team who can’t retain women, what a surprise!)

Teams present seem to enjoy very long drawn-out games that last 90 minutes or more – it makes them feel like they’re getting “value for money”. On that note, the fact all teams were overcharged over the past two years is not a problem to them, and there is no willingness to refund the unnecessary overcharging of teams.

They still wonder why the game is not particularly attractive to newcomers, the late starting times and very long and boring games, now coupled with zero transparency regarding how the league charges and collects team fees.

For 2026, so far there are only two committee members. This will mean they will be even less responsive and less accountable. This group has weaponized incompetence very effectively.

My suggestions for improving the league are not taken well, as they were written with that intention – so on this point, there was a great deal of success. The purpose was to allow the reader to evaluate the current set of conditions which would inspire these suggestions, and see the need to be transparent, accountable, and considerate of the softball membership and community. Instead, the suggestions were taken literally and with great offense, without realizing the hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, and mental gymnastics required to arrive at their illogical conclusions. For example, they want rules defining game start times, but they do not want to enforce start times. Basically, “anything goes” depending on what team captains agree to, or not, and this can vary between teams, umpires, and how they may like to collude, or not, with each other. In fact, it was clearly stated that the concept of “gamesmanship” is to be endorsed by all and the generally accepted way of proceeding. This has become the de facto methodology of the entire softball culture, perpetuated by the total lack of accountability and oversight from the league.

This group, who has always been wrong about everything, does not want to change what they are doing. They have no value system, no credibility, no integrity, and have demonstrated themselves to be untrustworthy. They would cheat at a coin toss; and they wonder why they cannot retain players.