National Hurling League Pools 2014

There's only two weeks to go til the start of the NHL 2014.
There are usually a handful of posters who have no real interest in the football version, so for the second season running, I’ll run the National Hurling League Pools competition.
The concept is almost identical to the football competition, though it’s usually more difficult to predict promotions/relegations and results when you get into the lower divisions.

Here are the rules.

1. Each Monday I will post up the fixtures for the coming week and by Tuesday or Wednesday I should have the league table of posters and points for the previous week just gone.

2. Late comers will be accepted but points will be forfeited for any games missed.

3. Predictions will be accepted and valid by throw in time of the first game of the weekend. If you make/edit a prediction after the start of a game, your prediction for that game will be invalid. For example, the first league games of the season are at 7pm on February 15th. If your predictions are made at, say, 8pm, your predictions for these games will not count.

4. The points system I am using similar to that used in the NFL pools. You get 2 points for predicting the winner of the game.
Should a poster predict within 2 points of the winning margin,that poster will receive 1 bonus point.
Should a poster predict a draw,the poster will receive 3 points and where a poster predicts a team to win but the result is a draw,the poster will get 1 point ONLY if the poster has predicted a winning margin of no more than 2 points.
Needless to say if you predict a team to win and they lose you get no points.
In a slight change to the NFL scoring system (given the fact that hurling games are generally higher scoring than football), I'll award one point if a person predicts a draw yet the result is a 1 or 2 point win for either side.

Note: Only the result after 70 minutes will be counted (for use in the league finals)

5. Bonus points will be awarded at the end of the league for predicting the correct teams who get promoted and relegated respectfully (and predicting the NHL division 1 champion). More points will be available on prediction of the winner of the league finals/relegation playoffs. You get 2 points for each correct prediction for promotion and relegation
To those joining after the first set of fixtures are finished, these bonus point predictions can still be made, but a 25% penalty for each week missed will apply.

Note: If, for whatever reason, there turns out to be no promotion/relegation between certain divisions (as was the case between 2B and 3A two seasons ago), I’ll consider the team that tops the lower division to be “promoted” and the bottom team from the higher team “relegated”.
Keep in mind, unlike the NFL, only one team from each division is promoted and one team relegated.

6. Posters must predict promotions/relegations in their first post with their first round of predictions. I will provide the league tables to aid in decision making.

7. To cut out a lot of time, if posters consistently fail to post their weekly predictions, I'll remove them from the overall tables.

If anyone has any questions about the rules, feel free to ask here or to PM me.