The Onward Cup: Competition Rules
Operated by Onward Padel. Centred on Peterborough and Stamford, open to anyone. Version 2.1. Applies to the Winter, Summer and Autumn Seasons.
Read this once. It is short on purpose, and it is written to be run by one person with a spreadsheet, not a committee. If you enter, you are agreeing to all of it.
1. What The Onward Cup is
1.1 The Onward Cup is a padel competition for pairs, run in seasons. There are three each year: Winter, Summer and Autumn. Each season is its own competition with its own winner. It is not a ladder that runs forever and it is not a league you sit in.
1.2 A season is nine weeks. Eight weeks of division fixtures, then Finals Day.
1.3 Onward Padel is a small brand run by one person. We do not own courts. We are not a club. We organise the competition, run the draw, keep the table and put on Finals Day. Everything else, including your courts, is yours.
1.4 The Cup is decided on court at Finals Day. Winning your division is not a title. It is a qualification. There is one winner each season and they win it at Smash Haus with people watching.
2. Entry, eligibility and the fee
2.1 You enter as a pair. Not as an individual. Find your partner first.
2.2 Entry is GBP 35 per pair, per season. That is GBP 17.50 each. Payable in full before the draw. Your place is not held until it clears.
2.3 What the GBP 35 buys:
- your place in a division and your five fixtures
- the live draw and your seeding
- your division WhatsApp group
- the table, kept honestly and updated by us
- Finals Day at Smash Haus if you qualify, courts included
- a shot at the trophy
2.4 What the GBP 35 does not buy: courts. Every court in the eight-week group stage is booked and paid for by the players. Onward hires nothing, books nothing and pays for nothing during the group stage. Budget roughly GBP 30 to GBP 45 per 90-minute court, split four ways, five times across the season. See section 6.
2.5 To be eligible you must be 18 or over on the day the season starts. We keep it adult-only deliberately: we are one person with a spreadsheet, not a safeguarding organisation.
2.6 Both players must submit a Playtomic or Padel Mates rating screenshot, dated within 7 days of entry. If you genuinely have no rating, say so and we will band you. See section 4.
2.7 A player may appear for one pair only in a season. Not two pairs, not a pair in each division, not a pair plus a reserve slot elsewhere. One.
2.8 Refunds. Full refund up to 7 days before the draw, no questions. Nothing after the draw, because the draw is the point at which your entry becomes someone else's fixture list.
2.9 We run 12 pairs or 16 pairs. Nothing else. Twelve gives two divisions of six and five fixtures each. Sixteen gives two divisions of eight and seven fixtures each. Entries are taken in the order they clear. If we land between the two, the pairs above the line play and the rest go on the reserve list in order, get in if anyone drops before the draw, and are refunded in full if they do not.
2.10 If we do not reach 12 pairs, the season does not run. You choose: full refund, or roll your entry to the next season. That is our risk, not yours.
2.11 Divisions of eight. Every rule below applies unchanged, except that you play seven fixtures instead of five, and the play-3 gate in rule 9.11 becomes play-4.
2.12 Pair name. Pick one at entry. It goes on the table and on camera. Keep it printable.
3. The format
3.1 Two divisions of six pairs. Division One and Division Two.
3.2 Round robin. You play every other pair in your division once. That is five fixtures, over eight weeks.
3.3 Five fixtures is deliberate. It gives the table enough redundancy to still mean something when some fixtures do not happen, and some will not.
3.4 The top two pairs in each division qualify for Finals Day. Four pairs, two semi-finals, one final, one trophy.
3.5 There is no promotion and relegation. With two divisions it would be a coin toss dressed up as a system. Every season re-seeds from scratch on current ratings, which does the same job better.
3.6 Divisions are not merged, split or rebalanced once the season has started.
4. Seeding and the draw
4.1 A pair's seeding number is the combined rating of its two players, taken as the higher of your entry screenshot and your rating on draw day. If you dump your level between entry and the draw, we use the number you walked in with.
4.2 Pairs are ranked by combined seeding number. The top half is Division One, the rest is Division Two.
4.3 The re-banding right. Onward may place a pair in a different division from the one their rating implies, if the rating is obviously wrong. Ratings are not a science; Playtomic and Padel Mates do not run the same pool and a 3.5 in one is not a 3.5 in the other. We use the number to sort. We use judgement to band. If you have no rating at all, we band you.
4.4 The seeded list, including any re-banding, is published 48 hours before the draw. If you think we have you wrong, say so then. Once the draw is filmed, nobody moves.
4.5 This right is exercised at seeding only. Never mid-season. A power we could use every week is a power five pairs would lobby us about every week, and we would rather not have it.
4.6 What the draw actually is. The divisions are already decided by rating; we are not pretending otherwise. The filmed draw sets and publishes, on camera, in one go: the fixture order, the deadline weeks and the designated initiator for every fixture. That is so nobody can claim later that the sheet moved.
4.7 If your rating rises sharply during a season, good. Nothing happens this season. You will be re-seeded next season and you will find Division One waiting.
4.8 Winning Division Two convincingly puts you in Division One next season, whatever your rating says. This is not a reward and it is not a punishment. It is the answer to sandbagging, and it is cheaper than a detection regime.
5. Scheduling: how fixtures actually get made
This is the section that decides whether the season works. Four diaries, no home court and someone has to pay. Read it properly.
5.1 Everything happens in the division WhatsApp group. Offers, acceptances, counter-offers, cancellations, scores. If it is not in the group, it did not happen and it is not evidence for anything in section 9. This is not bureaucracy; it is what stops the organiser having to referee two versions of a conversation.
5.2 DMs are not offers. Post it in the group where the other four pairs can see it. Most of the time that alone is enough, because ducking a public offer in front of your whole division is more expensive than just playing the match.
5.3 Every fixture has a designated initiator, published with the draw. The initiator has two jobs: make first contact in the group, and choose the venue. The other pair's job is to answer. Not to wait, not to counter-suggest a venue they prefer. Answer.
5.4 We name an initiator because the single most common way a fixture dies is that both pairs meant to message and neither did, and then neither of them is at fault. Now one of them is.
5.5 All five fixtures are open from day one. Each has its own published deadline week. A fixture must be played and posted by 23:59 on the Sunday of its deadline week.
5.6 The 10-day rule. The initiator must post an opening offer at least 10 days before that fixture's deadline. If they have not, the other pair may take over as initiator, including the venue right, simply by saying so in the group. From that moment the fixture is theirs to drive. See rule 9.8.
5.7 The venue. The initiator picks it. If it is on the venue list, their choice is final. Argue about times, not venues.
The venue list:
- Smash Haus Padel, Peterborough
- Padel X, Burghley Park, Stamford
- Pulse Padel, Huntingdon
- Any other venue both pairs agree on, anywhere at all
5.8 Off-list venues. The initiator can propose anywhere they like. If it is not on the list, the other pair may veto it once, in the group, and name a listed venue instead. That one is then final. You cannot veto a listed venue because you do not fancy the drive. You knew where the list was before you entered.
5.8a Where you live is your business. The Cup is centred on Peterborough and Stamford because that is where the courts are and where most of us play. It is not restricted to anyone. Enter from Cambridge, Huntingdon, Stamford, Bourne or anywhere else you like. The only fixed point in the whole season is Finals Day at Smash Haus. Everything else is four adults agreeing on a court, and if you and your opponents would rather play somewhere else entirely, rule 5.7 already lets you.
5.9 The deadline is a wall. When a fixture's deadline passes, that fixture is closed and scored as it stands. We do not extend individual fixtures. Ever. Not for holidays, not for work, not for a court that got cancelled on you. The moment one fixture gets an extension, every deadline in the competition becomes negotiable and the table stops meaning anything.
5.10 The only extension that exists is a whole-round extension, applied to every pair in both divisions at once, at the organiser's discretion, for something genuinely universal like weather or a venue closure. It is generous to everyone or to nobody.
5.11 Play early. The pairs who leave everything to week seven do not fail because they are lazy. They fail because by week seven there are no slots left that four people can make. See the early bonus in rule 8.9, which pays you for not doing that.
5.12 You may play fixtures out of order and ahead of their deadline. Please do. Nothing stops you playing all five in the first fortnight.
5.13 The season closes on one common date, published with the draw. Nothing is played, posted, claimed or disputed after it.
6. Courts: yours, entirely
6.1 You book your own court and you pay for it. Any venue, any day, any time, indoor or outdoor.
6.2 Onward is not a party to your booking. We do not book it, do not pay for it, do not hold it, do not guarantee it and cannot cancel it. The contract for that court is between you and the venue. If the venue double-books you, floods, closes or bills you twice, that is between you and them.
6.3 Book in your own name. Never in Onward's name, never as "The Onward Cup", never implying we stand behind the booking. We do not, and a venue chasing us for your no-show fee is the fastest way to end this competition.
6.4 How you split the court fee is up to the four of you. Sort it before you book, not after. The default, if nobody says otherwise before the booking is made, is four equal shares.
6.5 A compliant fixture court is a 90-minute booking. A 60-minute booking will not fit the match format in section 8. If you book one anyway, section 8's clock rules apply to the time you actually had, and you own the consequences.
6.6 You are responsible for satisfying yourself that the court is safe to play on. Onward has never seen it.
6.7 The unsafe court right. If any player considers the court genuinely unsafe, waterlogged, badly lit or dangerously slippery, they may refuse to play, before play starts, by posting in the group at the time with a photo. The fixture is then void: nobody is penalised, nobody is awarded anything, and it is exactly as if the fixture had never been arranged.
- The deadline does not move. If you cannot re-arrange inside it, that fixture is a nil.
- The pair invoking it loses the venue right for the re-arrangement. The other pair picks, inside 5.7.
- You may invoke it once per season. Once. That cap is what stops it becoming a free postponement lever, which is what it would otherwise be.
- We disclaim responsibility for court condition, so it would be indecent to punish you for walking away from a bad one. It would also be naive to hand you an unlimited excuse. This is the balance.
6.8 If the court becomes unplayable mid-match, the match is scored exactly as if the clock had beaten you. See rule 8.7. A fixture that starts produces a result.
6.9 Bring your own balls. Agree beforehand who is bringing them. Three decent balls, not three from last summer.
7. Substitutes
7.1 A pair may register one named reserve at entry. Optional. A squad of three, of whom two play.
7.2 The reserve is named at entry only, with a dated rating screenshot. Not on the night, not in the group chat an hour before. We check it once, before anyone has a reason to lie.
7.3 The reserve's rating must be at or below the lower-rated of your two registered players, measured at entry. You may cover an absence. You may not upgrade.
7.4 A reserve may play a maximum of 2 of your 5 fixtures (3 of 7 in divisions of eight). Beyond that, you are not the pair that entered.
7.5 A reserve may not be registered to any other pair, and may not be a registered player in either division.
7.6 If both registered players are unavailable, that is not a substitution. That is a walkover to your opponents.
7.7 No substitutions mid-match. If a player cannot continue, the pair retires. See rule 8.11.
7.8 Playing an ineligible player is a serious matter. If a pair fields anyone who is not one of its two registered players or its registered reserve, or uses the reserve beyond the 7.4 cap, the fixture is a walkover to their opponents and the offending pair takes -2. If it is discovered later, we apply it later.
7.9 Changing partner is a between-seasons thing. Your pair is fixed for the season. Tell us at least a week before the season ends if you want a different partner next time, and we will re-seed you accordingly.
7.10 Reserves and Finals Day. A reserve may play at Finals Day only if they played at least one group fixture for you, and rule 7.3 still applies.
8. Scoring
The match
8.1 Best of three sets. Sets one and two are standard: first to six games, win by two, seven-point tiebreak at 6-6.
8.2 The third set is a championship tiebreak. First to ten points, win by two. There is no full third set.
8.3 Golden point at deuce. At 40-40, the next point wins the game. The receiving pair chooses which box the serve goes into, and says so before the serve.
8.4 90-minute court. Five minutes of warm-up. 85 minutes of play, hard stop.
8.5 The match ends when someone has won two sets. That is the score, and that is what goes in the table. If you win 2-0 and there is court time left, play whatever you like: it is a friendly, it is not the match, and it never gets reported. We are not going to write a rule that makes winning a dead set the only way to protect four league points.
8.6 You get a point for turning up and losing. That is the consolation, and it is a real one. See the table.
8.7 If the clock beats you (time gone, match unfinished), nobody concedes and nothing is replayed. A fixture that starts always produces a result. Score it exactly like this, in order, stopping at the first line that separates you:
- Sets. A completed set stands. A set in progress goes to whichever pair leads by two games or more. A set in progress that is level or has a one-game lead is settled immediately by a seven-point tiebreak; it takes four minutes, play it beside the court if you have to. An unfinished championship tiebreak goes to whoever leads.
- Games, if the sets are level or unresolvable. Total games won across everything played.
- One sudden-death point, if the games are level too. Serve it.
Running out of time is not an exit.
The table
8.8 League points:
| Outcome | Points |
|---|---|
| Win 2-0 | 5 |
| Win 2-1 | 4 |
| Win by walkover (opponent defaulted) | 3 |
| Lose 1-2 | 2 |
| Lose 0-2 | 1 |
| Nil result (nobody made it happen, rule 9.9) | 0 |
| Give a walkover | 0 |
| No-show at an agreed fixture (rule 9.10) | -2 |
Note what this ladder does.
Turn up and get beaten 0-6 0-6 and you still bank a point. Do not turn up and you bank nothing, or less than nothing. Over five fixtures that is the difference between mid-table and Finals Day, for doing nothing but showing up.
A walkover win pays 3, less than any played win. It is worth claiming against a pair that is ducking you. It is never worth engineering, because playing pays more, and it earns you nothing toward the gate in rule 9.11.
8.9 Bonuses. These are the two rules that decide whether your season is a competition or a group chat.
- Availability bonus: 3 points at the end of the season to any pair none of whose fixtures ended in a nil result or a default by them. Note the wording carefully. Being given a walkover does not cost you the bonus. If your opponents ghost you and you claim it, you keep it. You are punished for your own failure to make fixtures happen, never for theirs.
- Early bonus: 1 point to any pair with two fixtures resolved by the end of week four (played, or won by walkover). This is the one that matters most. It exists to drag your fixtures out of week eight, where they go to die. The fixture list is built so that at least three of your deadlines fall in the first five weeks, so this is always achievable.
8.10 The table has no title. It decides who goes to Smash Haus. It does not crown anybody. See rule 1.4.
8.11 Retirement. If a player cannot continue through injury or illness, the pair retires, loses the match, and the match is scored exactly as it stood with the remainder awarded to their opponents. It is not replayed and there is no special points line for it. Retiring is bad luck and the table treats it as the loss it is. Not showing up is a choice, and the table treats that differently.
8.12 Withdrawal. If a pair withdraws mid-season, every fixture they have not yet played converts to a walkover win for their opponents (3 points each). Results they have already played stand. We do not delete them. Deleting results punishes the pairs who did the work, and in a six-pair division it would detonate the table. A withdrawn pair does not qualify for Finals Day and their entry is not refunded.
9. Walkovers, defaults and fixtures that never happen
Plan for this section to get used. It is not pessimism, it is arithmetic: four diaries at roughly 60% availability each intersect about 13% of the time, against 36% for tennis singles. That is a threefold scheduling penalty, and unlike park tennis, an unplayed padel match still costs somebody court money. Some fixtures will not happen. The rules just have to make sure the right pair carries it, without a tribunal.
9.1 The Rule of Three. To claim a walkover, you must have posted three qualifying offers in the group, and your opponents must have neither accepted one nor posted three qualifying offers of their own.
9.2 A qualifying offer is a specific date and time that is:
- at least 5 clear days ahead at the moment you post it
- in the core window: weekdays 17:30 to 21:30, or weekends 08:00 to 21:00
- your three must be spread across at least two different calendar weeks, and at least one must be at a weekend
Three offers at 7am on a Tuesday is not an offer, it is a trap, and it earns you nothing. Three offers all crammed into the same week is not an offer either, it is the same trap wearing a hat.
9.3 Offers lapse. An offer stands for 48 hours, or until the slot is 48 hours away, whichever comes first. After that it is gone and does not count against anyone.
9.4 Counter-offers are binding. This is the important one. If you respond with three qualifying offers of your own and the other pair accepts one within 48 hours, that fixture is agreed and you must play it. If you then do not, that is a no-show: -2 and a walkover against you (rule 9.10).
Read 9.4 again if you were planning to neutralise a walkover claim by lobbing back three slots you never actually wanted. Every fake counter-offer is a landmine you are carrying in your own pocket.
9.5 What counts as a response. Only two things: accepting an offer, or posting three qualifying offers. Nothing else.
"Can't do those, will come back to you." "Let me check with my partner." A thumbs up. A laughing face. Silence with good intentions. None of those are a response, and none of them stop the clock. This is deliberate. A rule that any single word could reset would be no rule at all.
9.6 The clock. Once three qualifying offers are on the table and nothing has come back:
- 5 days with no qualifying response: tag them in the group.
- 48 hours after the tag, still nothing: post that you are claiming the walkover. You have it.
9.7 You claim it, not us. The aggrieved pair marks the walkover in the group. The organiser does not award it; the organiser simply does not stop it. If nobody claims, nothing happens. The burden sits with the pair that cares.
Objecting to a claim. The other pair has 48 hours to object, in the group, by pointing at the specific message that defeats the claim: an acceptance, or their own three qualifying offers. Not an explanation, not a story, a message. If they do, the organiser reads the scroll once and answers four yes-or-no questions:
- Are three qualifying offers from the claimant in the group?
- Did the other pair accept one?
- Did the other pair post three qualifying offers of their own?
- Did the 5 days and the 48 hours run?
Yes, no, no, yes: the walkover stands. Anything else: it does not. That is the whole adjudication, it takes two minutes, and it is final.
9.8 The initiator who never opens. If the designated initiator has not posted an opening offer by 10 days before the deadline, the other pair takes over as initiator (venue right included) by saying so in the group. From that moment the Rule of Three is theirs to use. An initiator who never opens has handed their opponents a loaded weapon and should not act surprised.
9.9 When neither pair is at fault: the nil result. Both pairs offered in good faith. Nothing intersected. The deadline passes.
That fixture scores 0-0. Automatically. No claim, no form, no adjudication, no argument. The organiser's action is to do nothing.
The important part: a nil is worse than losing. Turn up and get thrashed, you get a point and you keep your availability bonus. Never arrange it, you get nothing and the bonus is gone for both of you. A nil is never a hiding place, which is exactly why it is safe to leave it unadjudicated.
Also: if no score is posted by the deadline, it is a nil, whether or not you played. A match that only exists in your memory is not a result. Either pair may post the score; see section 10.
9.10 Late cancellation and no-shows. Once a fixture is agreed and a court is booked, it is real, and someone is paying for it.
- More than 24 hours' notice: fine, reschedule inside the deadline.
- Less than 24 hours' notice: the other pair may claim a walkover, or reschedule. Their choice, not yours.
- Not turning up, or arriving more than 30 minutes late: the other pair may claim the walkover and the absent pair takes -2.
- A cancellation must be acknowledged in the group. If you cancel and nobody acknowledges it, you have not cancelled. Firing a message into the void at 11pm and treating silence as agreement does not work. The risk of your message not landing is yours, not theirs.
- You pay for the court you did not turn up to. A no-show pair owes the other pair their share of the court fee, settled within 7 days. Padel is not park tennis: a no-show does not waste an evening, it wastes an evening and roughly GBP 20 of someone else's money. If you do not settle it, you do not enter the next season. We cannot make you pay. We can absolutely decide who gets a place.
9.11 The Finals Day gate: you must have played 3. A pair cannot take a Finals Day place unless it actually played at least three of its five fixtures, whatever the table says. Walkover wins count for points. They do not count toward the gate.
If withdrawals or deemed withdrawals (9.12) leave you with fewer than four opponents still active at their fixture's deadline, the gate drops to two. We are not going to gate you on fixtures nobody was left to play.
If you cannot clear the gate, the next eligible pair in your division goes instead.
This exists because at realistic completion rates a pair could top a division on one played win and a stack of walkovers, and that pair walking out at Smash Haus to contest a trophy would discredit the whole season. Three of five is set deliberately low so that an honest pair whose opponents were the flakes still clears it.
9.12 Ghosts, and why they are worse than quitters. A pair that formally withdraws hands everyone a walkover, which is survivable. A pair that says nothing at all hands everyone a nil, which vaporises four other pairs' bonuses. The silent pair does more damage than the honest quitter, so it cannot be treated more gently.
At the end of week four, a pair that has posted nothing in the group and resolved zero fixtures is deemed withdrawn. The organiser posts it. Rule 8.12 applies to their remaining fixtures, and any nils they have already caused convert to walkover wins for their opponents. They are not eligible to enter the following season.
This is one check, on one fixed date, on one unarguable fact: did they post, yes or no. It is the only mid-season call the organiser makes, and it makes itself.
9.13 The Onward Guarantee. If you played at least three fixtures, and two or more of your five ended as a nil or as a walkover in your favour, your next season's entry is free.
You paid GBP 35 for five fixtures and other people's diaries took them off you. We cannot give you the season back. We can make sure you did not pay for it twice, and we would rather carry that cost than pretend the problem does not exist.
9.14 There is no discretionary excuse clause. Not because we do not believe you, but because "work got busy" is unfalsifiable, and the moment we start weighing excuses, one person with a spreadsheet becomes a full-time tribunal. The five-fixture redundancy, the nil result, the bonuses and the Guarantee are the flexibility. They are already priced in.
10. Results: submitting and verifying
10.1 The winning pair posts the score in the division group, sets and games, within 48 hours. If they do not, either pair may post it. If nobody has posted it by the fixture's deadline, it is a nil (rule 9.9). Both of you have a reason to care. Act like it.
10.2 The losing pair has 4 days to object. Say nothing for 4 days and the result is confirmed automatically and goes in the table. Silence is agreement.
10.3 This is how the whole thing stays runnable by one person. Apathy is the most abundant substance in any amateur league, so the rules are built so apathy resolves fixtures rather than blocking them.
10.4 How to object. In the group, within the 4 days, stating the score you say it was. An objection that does not name an alternative score is not an objection, it is a complaint, and it does nothing.
If the two pairs cannot agree, the organiser picks one of the two scores on the table. Never a third, never a replay, never a conversation about it afterwards. That bounds the argument to a coin toss between two known options, which is the most this is worth.
10.5 A rejected objection costs you 1 point. Spite should have a price. If you object and the organiser confirms the original score, you drop a point. Object because you think the score is wrong, not because you fancy taxing a rival's afternoon.
10.6 Check the table. It is published weekly. If something is wrong, say so before that fixture's deadline passes. After the deadline, the table is the table.
10.7 Faking a result is the one thing that gets you thrown out.
This means: posting a score for a match that was never played; posting a score you know is wrong; suggesting to an opponent that you could just agree a score and not bother playing; deliberately losing a fixture; or agreeing a result with anyone before it is played.
You are required to try to win every fixture you play. That includes the fixture in week eight where a particular scoreline happens to suit both of you. Especially that one.
Every player involved in a fabricated or arranged result is disqualified from the season, forfeits their entry fee and is not invited back. That includes the pair who merely went along with it.
If someone suggests it to you, you are required to tell us. Yes, that means the person you would need to collude with is the person obliged to report you. That is the point.
10.8 We are naming this so plainly because we know exactly where the pressure comes from. Two pairs who cannot find a slot, who both have to pay for a court, and who both want the availability bonus, have an obvious and mutually agreeable way out. The bonus makes that temptation worse, not better. We think the bonus is worth it. But it only works if the honesty holds, and the entire competition is built on honesty. Every score in the table is there because someone said so.
11. Division tie-breaks
Applied strictly in this order. Stop at the first one that separates them.
11.1 League points, including bonuses.
11.2 Head to head, if the tied pairs actually played each other. A walkover does not count as a head to head. You cannot beat someone by not playing them.
11.3 Fewest sets conceded, averaged per fixture actually played. Averaged, not totalled. A raw total quietly rewards the pair that played fewer matches, which is precisely backwards in a season where nobody expects a full round robin.
11.4 The same average again, with walkover wins stripped out. A pair that got to the top by collecting walkovers does not also get to win the tie-break against a pair that played.
11.5 Fewest games conceded, averaged per fixture played.
11.6 Most fixtures played.
11.7 A coin toss, filmed, in the group.
11.8 If three or more pairs are tied, work through the same order treating the tied pairs as a mini-table, then separate the remainder from the top.
12. Ratings and sandbagging
12.1 We know sandbagging is possible. Playtomic lets you lower your own level manually and will not let you put it back. Dump accounts exist. Reliability scores can be farmed by only ever playing your mates. None of this is a secret.
12.2 We are not building a detection regime for 12 pairs. Here is the whole of what we do instead, and we think it is enough:
- dated screenshots at entry, and we use the higher of that and your draw-day rating (rule 4.1)
- the re-banding right, exercised in public, before the draw (rule 4.3)
- win Division Two convincingly and you are in Division One next season (rule 4.8)
- full re-seeding every season
- there is a trophy and no prize money, so there is very little to win by lying and a reputation to lose in a padel scene this small
12.3 If you sandbag your way into Division Two, the reward is that you beat some people who came for a nice competitive season, on camera, and then everyone knows. Have a think about whether that is the afternoon you wanted.
13. Conduct and disputes
13.1 Matches are self-umpired. There is no referee. Calls are made honestly, and if you are genuinely unsure whether it was in, it was in.
13.2 Be decent in the group. It is the same twelve people every season and padel round here is small.
13.3 The organiser's decision is final. On interpretation, on edge cases, on anything this document did not anticipate. We would rather have this line than write ten more pages trying to anticipate everything.
13.4 We can remove a pair from a season for serious misconduct, cheating or abuse, with no refund.
13.5 If you have a real problem, raise it with Onward directly, in writing, before the fixture's deadline. Not after, and not in the group at midnight.
14. Fitness, liability and insurance
14.1 You play at your own risk. All of it.
14.2 You confirm that you are fit enough to play competitive padel, that you have no medical condition that makes it unwise, and that this is your judgement to make, not ours.
14.3 Onward Padel is not responsible for any injury, illness, loss, theft or damage arising from any fixture, any court, any venue or any journey to or from one. We are the organiser of a competition. We are not your club, your coach, your insurer, or the occupier of any court you play on.
14.4 We are not a party to any booking you make during the group stage, and we accept no liability arising from one. You book in your own name (rule 6.3). Any dispute with a venue about price, cancellation, condition or conduct is yours.
14.5 You are responsible for your own personal insurance if you want any. Most players do not have it. That is your call, made knowingly.
14.6 Nothing here tries to limit liability for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Your statutory rights are not affected by anything in this document.
14.7 On the entry fee and cancellation rights. The Onward Cup is a leisure service supplied on specified dates, published before you pay. Your right to a refund is set out in rule 2.8.
14.8 If we cannot run Finals Day at Smash Haus, we will move it to a comparable venue and, if we must, to a new date within 28 days. If it genuinely cannot run at all, every pair in the season gets GBP 17.50 credit against the next season, and the four qualifiers get in free.
14.9 On Finals Day at Smash Haus, we hire the courts, and Smash Haus's own terms, rules and safety requirements apply to you while you are there.
15. Finals Day
15.1 Week nine. Smash Haus Padel, Mancetter Square, 1184 Lincoln Rd, Peterborough PE4 6LA. Four indoor courts, a bar and a shop.
15.2 Onward pays for the Finals Day courts. This is the one day we book, and it is included in your GBP 35.
15.3 Four qualifiers. Top two from each division, subject to the play-3 gate in rule 9.11.
15.4 Two semi-finals, then the final.
- Semi-final A: Division One winner v Division Two runner-up
- Semi-final B: Division Two winner v Division One runner-up
15.5 Semi-finals and the final are best of three with a championship tiebreak third, exactly as section 8. The final is the only match of the season played with people watching.
15.6 The winners take the Onward Cup.
15.7 If a qualifier cannot attend. Tell us as soon as you know, and no later than 7 days before Finals Day.
- If one player cannot attend and you have a registered reserve who played at least one group fixture, the reserve plays (rule 7.10).
- If you cannot field two eligible players, your place goes to the next eligible pair in your division, working down the table with the gate and tie-breaks applied.
- If you pull out with less than 7 days' notice, or do not show, the place still passes down if the next pair can get there; if nobody can, your semi-final opponents go straight to the final. You are not eligible to enter the following season.
15.8 Finals Day cannot be rescheduled for one pair. The date is published with the draw, before you pay. Put it in your diary in week one.
15.9 Come and watch. Finals Day is open to everyone in the season, whether you qualified or not. Smash Haus has a bar and it is a good afternoon. The pairs who went out in the groups are exactly who we want in the room.
16. Filming, photos and your data
16.1 The draw is filmed and published. Finals Day is filmed and photographed.
16.2 By entering, you agree that Onward Padel may film and photograph you at Onward events, and use that footage and those images on our website, our social channels and in our marketing, without payment. This includes your name, your pair name, your rating band and your results.
16.3 The table is public. Your pair name, results and standing are published. That is what a competition is.
16.4 Your division WhatsApp group means the other players see your phone number. If that is a problem for you, do not enter, because the group is not optional. Do not use those numbers for anything except this competition.
16.5 What we hold: your name, phone, email, home postcode, rating screenshot, payment reference and results. We use it to run the competition and to tell you when the next season opens. We do not sell it and we do not pass it to anyone else.
16.6 Deletion. Ask us to delete your personal data and we will. We will keep the published results and the published footage, because you cannot un-run a competition and the record has to stand. If you ask us to stop using your image in new marketing, we will stop.
16.7 If you genuinely cannot be filmed, tell us before the draw and we will do our best on Finals Day. We cannot promise a wide shot of a padel court will never contain you.
17. Changes to these rules
17.1 We may correct or clarify these rules between seasons. We will not change them mid-season except to fix something that is plainly broken, and if we do, we will post the change in both division groups and say why.
17.2 The version published on the day of the draw is the version that governs that season.
Onward Padel. Enter as a pair. Play your five. Turn up at Smash Haus.