Recording an injury

This is a common question as a very poor result can ding your level. There are limits to how much it can drop in one match but if you couldn't complete the match through injury it's probably not a fair representation of your level. This is a sensitive area because your opponent is equally effected and will lose out on what they probably think was a good result! For a result to be recorded as an injury at least one of the following must be true:

• The match didn't complete - i.e. only one or two games played out of three. If we see a points score for a third game, it becomes much less clear cut.
• The result must clearly look like an injury with at least one game lost with zero points score.
• If this was a team match, both team captains must agree that the result was affected by your injury. We need to hear from at least one of them. Alternatively we need to hear from the league secretary.
• In the case of a tournament match, the tournament organiser must confirm that the result was affected by an injury. 
• Your opponent must agree that the result was affected by your injury. We need to hear from them.

That way there is no argument! This is a common request and quite often an apparently clear injury is recorded as such and then we receive a concerned email from the opponent.

League Master has a flag that can be set in the results form but that can only be set by the league secretary. Please get in touch with them to set that flag. The flag will then be uploaded to SquashLevels along with the results. Note this flag can be applied (or removed) at any time.

Badsquash has a flag that can be set by the team captain when entering the results. This can also be applied at any time.

Because the systems above upload the injury flag along with the results, any injury must be recorded on the respective system. If it is recorded solely on SquashLevels then the flag will be overwritten next time the result is uploaded and the injury record will be lost. The other league systems don't support the injury flag so please get in touch with us here and we can set it directly in SquashLevels. We will need to see evidence as required above.

Why not just record where we got to?

We often get asked this. The game was all fair and above board then one player hurts their knee and pulls out. Surely you should record the result at that time and adjust levels accordingly...

Unfortunately that's just one case but we have to consider all of the following and more:

• Their knee was probably hurting for the previous few points before they retired. We don't know how far back to go.
• Some players start the match feeling terrible and realise their mistake half way through the second game and have to stop. In that case they were nowhere near their level at any time.
• Some players always start slow and grind their opponents down. Very common for them to lose the first game or two and come back with a win. If they retire half way through how do we measure that.
• Some players have a terrible first two games and then bail because they don't want their level affected. Now here's a case that would warranty leaving as-is - unfortunately we'd need some pretty solid evidence to argue against the player that, really, they weren't injured.
• Some players soldier on with an injury and complete their match. We don't typically record these as injuries but it does happen a lot - an injured player is asked to stand in for the team because they are  short and the agreement is, yes, as long as it doesn't affect my level! Again, we need to see hard evidence on this one.

SquashLevels is a system that's based on accuracy so we'd rather not have unrepresentative results come in from genuine injuries. We understand that the 'winner' would like their level to go up but they're only really kidding themselves. It will just go back down again next time they play. It's also not fair on the injured player if it was a genuine injury and that takes us back to the key question - was it a genuine injury. Strong evidence is needed for this.